LOS ANGELES COUNTY

MUSEUM OF ART

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Thames & Hudson world of art

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LOS ANGELES COUNTY

MUSEUM OF ART

WITH 197 ILLUSTRATIONS, 184 IN COLOR

^^^^ Thames & Hudson world of art

LOS ANGELES COUNTY MUSEUM OF ART

For the Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Director of Publications: Stephanie Emerson

Project Manager: Nola Butler

Editors: Matt Stevens and Nola Butler

Designer: Catherine Lorenz

Photography Supervisor: Peter Brenner

Rights and Reproductions: Cheryle T. Robertson, with Shaula Coy!

Note to the reader

Not every work of art included in this book will be on view at all times.

The first group of digits in the acquisition numbers (found at the end of the
captions for illustrated objects) indicates the year the work was acquired by
the museum.

Key to abbreviations used In this book
cb. center back
diam. diameter
h. height

This compilation © 2003 Thames & Hudson Ltd, London
Reproductions and -texts © 2003 Los Angeles County Museum of Art

All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including
photocopy recording or any other information storage and retrieval system,
without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

First published in paperback in the United States of America in 2003 by
Thames & Hudson Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10110

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Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 20021 1 1486
ISBN 0-500-20360-1

Printed and bound in Singapore by CS Graphics

Cover and details

Georges de La Tour, The Magdalen with the Smoking Flame (p. 97); p. 2:
Archangel Raphael (p. 1 13); p. 3: Pablo Picasso, Weeping Woman with
Handkerchief {p. 211); p. 4: Quail amid Autumn Grasses and Flowers (p. 70);
p. 5: Michiel Sweerts, Plague in an Ancient City (p. 99); p. 6: Benedetto Luti,
Head of an Apostle (p. 106); p. 7: Shiva as Lord of the Dance (p. 38); p. 8:
David Hockney Mulholland Drive: The Road to the Studio (p. 224); p. 1 1 :
Ardabil Carpet (p. 58); p. 12: Edgar Degas, Giovanna and Giuliana Bellelli
(p. 120); p. 14: Vincent van Gogh, The Postman Joseph Roulin (p. 126); p. 17:
Jar with Peony Sprays and Lotuses (p. 53); p. 1 8: Round-Topped Stela of luf-
er-bak (p. 84); p. 228: Imogen Cunningham, Aloe Bud (p. 188)

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CONTENTS

15 FOREWORD

Andrea L. Rich, President and Director

19 CONTRIBUTORS

THE COLLECTION

20 ASIAN ART

80 EUROPEAN ART

128 IJ\TIN AMERICAN ART

156 AMERICAN ART

192 MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ART

229 PHOTOGRAPHY CREDITS

230 INDEX OF ARTISTS

FOREWORD

In the fifteen years since the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)
published its preceding handbook, the institution has changed physically
and programmatically in remarkable ways. Like any art museum, however,
the permanent collection remains its defining feature. This completely
revised handbook includes important new acquisitions as well as many
of our familiar landmark works of art.

The brief texts were written by LACMA's curatorial staff, the experts
charged with the acquisition, research, and exhibition of the collections.
(Contributors are cited on p. 19.) Both the selection of objects and the
interpretive commentaries demonstrate the significance of these individual
works of art within the permanent collection. In addition to introducing
recently acquired works, the handbook provides a forum for the pre-
sentation of new scholarship, including the latest attributions and datings.

The five sections of the book — Asian Art, European Art, Latin American
Art, American Art, and Modern and Contemporary Art — reflect U\CMA's
collaborative curatorial organization. This interdisciplinary approach, also
evident in the museum's installations, is designed to make the interpretation
of our collections more accessible, coherent, and revealing. With these
goals in mind, the curators have opted for different strategies within each
section of the handbook, sometimes arranging works chronologically, as
in the European Art section, at other times assembling the objects the-
matically, as in the section devoted to Asian art. The result is neither a
comprehensive catalogue of the permanent collection nor a definitive
statement about its organization. Rather, this representative selection
is meant to enhance the visitor's experience as well as attract a new
audience to the museum.

Some of the works in the handbook came to LACMA as individual
acquisitions; others were obtained through gifts or purchases of extensive
collections. From its inception as part of the Los Angeles Museum of
History, Science and Art at the original site in Exposition Park in 1910,
through its founding as a separate institution at its present location in
Hancock Park in 1965, the museum has relied on the generous gifts of

15

many donors to develop its permanent collection. A number of these
individuals and foundations are credited in the entries for the illustrated
objects. Because this publication is representative, rather than all-inclusive,
numerous highly valued gifts and purchased works of art unfortunately do
not appear in these pages.

We anticipate that UXCMA's collection will continue to grow as we
strive to present it in meaningful ways. Most recently, it has been en-
hanced by three major acquisitions — the Moore Collection of Korean Art,
the Bernard and Edith Lewin Collection of Mexican Art, and the Madina
Collection of Islamic Art. I hope that you will share my great pleasure in
witnessing the expanding scope of LACMA's permanent collection and,
in turn, its reflection of the diverse local and international community that
serves as our museum-going audience.

Andrea L. Rich
President and Director

16

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CONTRIBUTORS

Austen B. Bailly
Stephanie Barron
Sheri Bernstein
Robert L. Brown
Martin Chapman
Carol S. Eliel
Virginia Fields
llene Susan Fort
Howard N. Fox
Dale Carolyn Glucknnan
Mollis Goodall
Sharon Goodman
Burglind Jungmann
Wendy Kaplan
Nona Katzew
Melinda Klayman
Linda Komaroff

Jo Lauria
Mary L. Levkoff
June Li

J. Patrice Marandel
Stephen Markel
Bruce Robertson
Sandra L. Rosenbaum
Kevin Salatino
Robert T. Singer
Robert A. Sobieszek
Kaye Durland Spilker
Sharon Sadako Takeda
Nancy Thomas
Saleema Waraich
J. Keith Wilson
Lynn Zelevansky

19

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ASIAN ART

22

Vessel

Japan, Niigata or Nagano prefecture, middle Jdmon period,

c. 3000-2000 B.C.

Coil-built earthenware with incised, modeled, and applied decoration

H. 22V8in. (56.2 cm)
William T. Sesnon Jr. Bequest
M. 81. 62.1

THIS IMPRESSIVE STONE AGE VESSEL reflects the remarkable character
of Japan's earliest ceramic culture. The massive container was decorated
with incised patterns enhanced by applied leather-hard strings of clay. The
exuberant surface design is organized in four registers divided by raised
bands. The sunken waist, marked by projecting lugs, separates the tall
vertical spirals at the bottom from the horizontal waves and small open
loops on the swelling shoulder above. The mouth is enriched with animated
open crests that reach into space. After it was decorated, the jar was
baked on an open bonfire.

Magnificently expressive "flame-style" pots were made during the
middle Jomon period in the inland, forested areas of Niigata prefecture,
near the Japan Sea, and in neighboring Nagano prefecture. Now called the
"Snow Country," the region had warmer weather in ancient times. An
abundance of food and supplies provided social stability to hunter-gatherer
societies, allowing them to create large, ornately decorated vessels.
Although the ceramics appear nonfunctional, they were in fact used for
cooking, perhaps of a ritual nature.

ASIAN ART 23

Seated Female Figure

Northern Afghanistan, Namazga V-VI,
c. 2500-1500 B.C.
Chlorite and limestone
H. 5V4 in. (13.3 cm)

Purchased with funds provided by Phil Berg
M.2000,1a-f

THE BRONZE AGE CULTURE of Bactria
(3000-1500 B.C.), located in present-day
Afghanistan, defines the easternmost
edge of a broad band of ancient trade
routes from Iran to Central Asia. The
museum's collection of Bactrian art is
one of the most significant in the United
States and includes bronze compartmented seals, lead ceremonial objects,
chlorite vessels, jewelry, small columns of variegated stone, as well as this
seated female figure.

Figural sculpture from Central Asia is exceedingly rare. The restricted
corpus includes a number of examples of a seated female constructed
from a variety of different types of stone. The figures, dressed in heavy
enveloping cloaks, have simplified facial features with large blank eyes. The
garment is usually incised with a pattern of twisted strands, probably
indicating a woolen model. On this example, the figure's hair is rendered in
black chlorite, showing a complex arrangement that encircles the head.
The characteristic face, though somewhat eroded, is expressive. The
chalky arms are also worn and provide no indication of their original
position. The placement of a rarely preserved element — a single foot — is
suggested by the channel at the right hem of the garment.

The heavy robe provides a link to imager/ from Iran. A silver vessel of
the late third millennium b.c, believed to be from the area near Persepolis,
shows a similar seated woman. Later Iranian cylinder seals, found at Tell-i
Malyan and Susa, evidence the continued appeal of the subject into the
second millennium e.c.

24

Ritual Wine Storage Jar

China, late Shang dynasty, early Anyang phase, c. 1300-1200 B.C.
Cast bronze

H. 133/4 in. (34.9 cm)

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Eric Lidow
AC1998.251.1

IN ANCIENT CHINA, BRONZE WAS EMPLOYED to create efficient weapons
and tools. It was also used to cast special wine and food containers reserved
to honor deceased family members in elaborate ritual banquets. This heavy
wine bucket {zun in Chinese) reflects the remarkable style, extraordinary
technical accomplishment, and material wealth associated with the Shang
dynasty (c. 1 500-1 050 b.c).

The original owner of the uninscribed ritual container was a person of
high standing, perhaps rewarded with the privilege of possessing such an
important object through service to the Shang king. The vessel was later
buried in a tomb either because it was viewed as an essential element for the

continuation of ancestor
worship even after death or
because it was seen as a
treasured possession.
Preserved underground for
millennia, it was probably
excavated by chance in the
early twentieth century.

ASIAN ART

25

Ashurnasirpal II and a Winged Deity

Iraq, Nimrud, Neo-Assyrian period, c. 870 b.c,

Gypseous alabaster

903/4 X 83 in. (230.5 x 210.8 cm)

Purchased with funds provided by Anna Bing Arnold
66.4.3

THE MOST MONUMENTAL AND IMPRESSIVE objects from the museum's
ancient West Asian collection are five massive stone panels from the
Northwest Palace of Ashurnasirpal II, the king of ancient Assyria from 883
to 858 B.C. Several palaces were located at the site, on high ground near
the juncture of the Zab and Tigris Rivers. Strategically situated, the royal
capital and military center overlooked rich plains in what is now central Iraq.

The interior walls of the royal apartments and public rooms, such as
audience halls and administrative areas, were lined with stone reliefs,
often depicting the king performing ritual ceremonies accompanied by
divine beings. This panel was probably originally located in Room H of the
king's private apartment. On it, a winged deity follows the king and raises
one hand in a gesture of benediction or divine protection. Ashurnasirpal II
carries a bow and a shallow libation vessel. The figures wear heavy
fringed tunics with decorative bands of floral or geometric motifs along
the hems. Each figure carries two knives, tucked into the waistband of
the garments, and wears an elaborate assemblage of armbands, earrings,
beads, and bracelets.

The reliefs are characterized by a detailed and highly linear treatment
of all elements. Lines of cuneiform text run across this and other examples
and are known as the "standard inscription" of Ashurnasirpal II because
they were repeated, with slight variations, on each panel throughout
the palace. The repetitive text proclaims the king's legitimacy, authority,
and accomplishments.

26

ASIAN ART

27

Tomb Sculpture of a Chimera

China, probably Sichuan Province, Eastern Han dynasty, 25-220
Molded earthenware with traces of applied decoration and paint
16% X 15% X 10 1/2 in. (42.8x39.7x26.7 cm)

Gift of Elly Nordskog and family in memory of Bob Nordskog
AC1997.1.1

IN GRAVES NEAR THE END
of the Bronze Age in China, mingqi,
or "spirit objects" (painted or glazed
earthenwares specifically made for
the dead), began to replace more
valuable cast bronzes, carved jades,
and lacquers. By Han times (206 b.c-
A.D. 220), ceramic vessels and figural
sculpture dominated the contents of
Chinese burials.

The museum's chimera combines
a crouching feline body with a long
neck and snarling muzzle, winglike
tufts, and a horn on either side of a
pronounced bump at the crown of
the head. Not an everyday creature,
this is a fantastic composite influenced by imaginary visualizations first
developed by China's neighbors to the west. It corresponds to a mythical
beast called a bixie (which literally means "to avoid evil"), first described in
Chinese texts datable to the second century e.c.

Such earthenware figures, typically created in pairs, were placed in
tombs to protect against malevolent spirits. The animation of the pose
recalls a range of burial pieces created in the southwestern province of
Sichuan. Related guardian figures were also executed in a larger scale in
stone, standing above ground to mark important tombs in Sichuan and the
lower Yangzi River valley in southeastern China.

28

Tomb Sculpture of a Seated Warrior

Japan, late Tumulus period, c. 500-600
Coil-built earthenware with applied decoration
31 X 143/8 X 15 in. (78.7 x 36.5 x 38.1 cm)

Mr. and Mrs. Allan C. Balch Fund
M. 58.9.4

THIS BEGUILING FIGURE OF A SEATED WARRIOR was used to decorate
the tomb of a noble during the Tumulus period (250-600). Originating in the
mid-second century as simple cylindrical forms, haniwa evolved into more
complex figural representations of houses, weapons, animals, and humans.
Regardless of subject, they were placed either low along the bank of a
keyhole-shaped tomb mound, opposite the entrance, or clustered near the
tomb door. Haniwa had to be constructed quickly upon the death of a noble

in preparation for burial. The resulting
simplicity of their design imbues them
with a mysterious quietness.

The museum's warrior, identified by
his helmet and sword, wears a belted
tunic, trousers, and beads. His hands,
positioned in front of his chest, probably
held a spear. The reddish low-fired clay
is typical, as are the neatly cut eye and
mouth holes.

ASIAN ART

29

Pensive Bodhisattva

Pakistan, Gandhara region, Kushan period, c. 200-300

Gray schist

22 X 11 X 6 V4 in. (55.9 x 27.9 x 15.9 cm)

Gift of Henry and Ruth Trubner in honor of the museum's twenty-fifth anniversary and to honor

Dr. Pratapaditya Pal

AC1994.8.1

THE ANCIENT COSMOPOLITAN REGION
known as Gandhara lay at the confluence of
the lucrative international trade routes
between Rome, India, and China, in what is
now Pakistan and bordering Afghanistan.
From the first to the third century, the
mighty Kushan dynasty ruled from
Gandhara in the north to the heartland of
India in the south. Buddhist sculpture,
particularly images of the Buddha and
bodhisattvas, were prevalent at the time.
Bodhisattvas are potential Buddhas
who choose to remain on earth to help
living beings in their quest for enlighten-
ment. Unlike the Buddha, typically shown
dressed as a monk, bodhisattvas wear the
clothing of lay princes, including a turban
and elaborate jewein/. The strongly modeled
chest, heavy garments, and carefully
delineated drapery folds of the museum's bodhisattva characterize Greco-
Roman artistic traditions. The meaningful pose of the figure also derives
from Western models introduced through trade between Gandhara and the
Roman world. The deity sits on a stool, his right leg crossed over his left,
and raises one finger to his face. With a slightly cocked head and narrowed
eyes, the composition recalls the quintessential Western posture of
contemplation. Over time, it came to represent meditation in a variety of
Buddhist contexts and was particularly popular in China, Korea, and Japan.

30

The Aristocratic Women

Pakistan, Gandhara region, Kushan period, c. 100-200

Gray schist

23V8X 133/4x6 in. (58.7 X 34.9 X 15.2 cm)

Purchased with funds provided by Mrs. Harry Lenart, Robert and Mary Looker, Robert F, Maguire III,
and The Hillcrest Foundation through the 1998 Collectors Committee, Stephen Markel in memory of
Catherine W. Markel, the Southern Asian Art Council, and S. Sanford and Charlene S. Kornblum
AC1 999.3.1

AS EXQUISITE AS IT IS RARE, this sensitive double portrait epitomizes the
syncretic art of Gandhara at its finest. The naturalistic figures are elegantly
garbed in fashions popular among the aristocracy of second-century
Rome. The subject, however, is most likely a parable about two unnamed
women in an incident from one of the past lives of the founder of
Buddhism, Buddha Shakyamuni (traditionally dated c. 563-483 b.c).

According to the legend recounted
in the Maha-Ummagga Jataka (The
Story of the great tunnel), the future
Buddha overheard two women
quarreling over a scented necklace
made of brightly colored entwined
threads. He asked each of the
women to name the perfume she
had placed on the necklace. The
Buddha-to-be then dropped the
necklace into a bowl of hot water
and asked a perfume merchant to
identify the scent. He did so, and the
legitimate owner was revealed.

ASIAN ART

31

Buddha Shakyamuni

India, probably Uttar Pradesh, Gupta period, c. 550-600

Cast brass with pigment

151/2x53/4x4 in. (39.4 X 17.1 x 10.2 cm)

Gift of the Michael J. Connell Foundation
M. 70.17

THE GUPTA PERIOD (320-600) is celebrated as a
high point in the art and culture of India, the moment
when Buddhist, Hindu, and Jain sculpture achieved a
balance between otherworldly idealism and human
sensuality. The combined reflection of the spiritual
and corporeal is a chief characteristic of this alluring
Buddha image. The deity's robe clings to the body,
revealing wide shoulders and a gentle sway of the
hips. As with all Buddha images, the display of the
hands has symbolic importance. Here, the Buddha
raises his right hand to reveal the palm, inviting
worshipers to approach without fear. The lowered
eyes likewise suggest gentleness and accessibility.

This refined sculpture was made in northern India
in the late sixth century. It was later taken to Tibet
where blue pigment was daubed over the hair curls
in accordance with Tibetan practice. Its transfer to a Tibetan monastery
saved it from suffering the fate of so many other northern Indian Buddhist
copper alloy sculptures, which were melted down over the centuries for
their content.

Jizo

Japan, late Heian period, c. 1070-1120

Wood

751/8 (including base) x 24 x 24 in. (190.8 x 61 x 61 cm)

Gift of Anna Bing Arnold
M. 74. 117

32

THIS MONUMENTAL IMAGE possesses many attributes of a Buddhist
monk. His head is shaven, thus lacking the small curls of the Buddha's
closely cropped hair. His empty right hand is positioned to grasp a shakujo
(jingle staff), one of a monk's eighteen possessions, which he tapped on
the ground to warn insects and small animals of his approaching footsteps.

This is not simply a monk, however, but a
bodhisattva named Jizb who became
extremely popular among Japanese
Buddhists following the introduction of
Buddhism to Japan in the sixth century.
Jizd was especially important among "Pure
Land" sect believers, who looked forward
to rebirth in Buddhist paradise. He was
worshiped as the protector of children,
mothers in childbirth, travelers, and others
in distress.

Like many Buddhist deities, the
museum's Jizo stands on a lotus base.
The pure flower rises above murky waters,
symbolizing release from the karmic wheel
of rebirth. In his left hand, Jizo holds a
wish-granting jewel attesting to his
transcendent power The enlightened
character of the deity is also manifested by
the elongated ears and third eye, indicated
by an inset jewel in the center of the
forehead. The large head, broad brow, and
small, delicate features convey the gentle
benevolence and approachability found in
the finest bodhisattva images of the late
Heian period.

ASIAN ART

33

Buddha Amitayus

Tibet, probably Phanyul Valley, about 1 170-1189
Thangka; opaque watercolor and gold on linen
102x69 in. (259.1 x 175.3 cm)

From the Nasli and Alice Heeramaneck Collection, Museum Associates Purchase
M.84.32.5

AMONG THE MOST DISTINCTIVE and revered forms of Asian art are
Tibetan thangka paintings. Rolled for storage and transport, thangkas are
rectangular images painted with ground mineral pigments on cotton or
linen. Most were originally graced with narrow silk borders, plain or brocade
silk mounts, and gossamer silk covers that were gathered at the top to
serve as decorative swags when the paintings were displayed over an altar.

This exceptionally large, early thangka features Amitayus, the cosmic
Buddha of endless life. The deity sits on a lotus pedestal holding a vase
containing the elixir of immortality. He is flanked on the viewer's left by
Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva of compassion; on the right is Maitreya,
the bodhisattva of wisdom. Monks and additional bodhisattvas pay
homage above while three more bodhisattvas appear below. Hayagriva
(in the lower left) and Achala (in the lower right) are fierce protectors of
the faith.

A dedicatory inscription unobtrusively placed among the lotus petals
under Amitayus records that the painting was made to honor Choki
Gyeltsen (1 121-1 189), an important Buddhist monk of the Kadampa order
who apparently resided in one of the monasteries in the Phanyul Valley
northeast of Lhasa. The inscription reads, "This picture, made by Chogyen,
marks the life-attainment ceremony of the Lama Choki Gyeltsen at
Cangragnaga in Bayul. Good Fortune!"

34

ASIAN ART

35

Votive Panel with Jambhala

China, early Ming period, c. 1400-1425

Silk and nnetal-thread embroidery on plain-weave silk

15% X 7V4 in. (39.7 x 18.4 cm)

Costume Council Fund
M. 88, 121

JAMBHALA, THE GOD OF WEALTH, serves as a powerful protector of the
Buddhist faith. In this elegant embroidery, he holds in one hand a noose for
subduing enemies and in the other a jewel-spitting mongoose with the power
to vanquish serpents. The deity is seated on a lotus throne, sheltered by
a prabha torana (arch of light) formed of tricolor clouds that emanate from
baskets also containing lotuses in bloom. In the lower section, scrolling vines

and additional lotus flowers sprout from a rendering
of the Sacred Peaks; each blossom supports a
Sanskrit character in Tibetan Lantsa script worked
in gold thread. The characters represent the
syllables of a mantra, a formula of words and
sounds that possesses magical or divine power.
This votive panel is one of a dozen known
examples featuring Buddhas, bodhisattvas, and
guardian figures that are remarkably consistent in
design and technique. Based on their style and
quality, the embroideries are thought to have been
made in China during the early Ming dynasty to
serve as imperial gifts to important Tibetan
Buddhist temples. Relations between China's rulers
and the lamas who led the major Buddhist orders
were extremely strong during the reign of Yongle
(1402-24), the third Ming emperor.

36

Toksewi, 153rd of the 500 Nahan

Korea, middle Choson dynasty, dated 1562
Hanging scroll; ink and color on silk
503/4 X 1 5 V2 in. (1 28.9 x 39.4 cm)

Murray Smith Fund
M. 84. 112

BUDDHISM REACHED KOREA via China in
the mid-fourth century and prospered under
royal patronage until the end of the Koryo
dynasty (918-1392). The establishment of
the Choson dynasty in 1392 challenged the
power, popularity, and character of Korean
Buddhism. Taejo (reigned 1392-98), first
king of the ruling house, founded his regime
on neo-Confucian tenets borrowed from
China. Despite the ascendancy of the new
doctrine. Buddhism continued to flourish
among certain segments of the population.
This beautiful image depicts a haloed figure studying a sutra scroll
inscribed with religious teachings. The scroll also bears an inscription that
identifies the subject as Toksewi, one of the 500 nahan, or disciples, of the
Buddha Shakyamuni. The painting was one of 200 scrolls commissioned
by the Dowager Queen Munjong (1501-1565) to ensure the long life of
her son King Myongjong (reigned 1545-67) and the well-being and
success of all her descendants. This is the only painting from the group
known to survive.

Son (Chinese; Chan; Japanese: Zen) Buddhists believed that
enlightenment could be reached through personal efforts. Thus, images of
mystical deities were much less inspiring than those featuring human
subjects such as disciples, patriarchs, and teachers. This informal
depiction, showing the figure in a three-quarter view seated in a natural
outdoor setting, conforms to compositions of a more secular character.

ASIAN ART

37

Shiva as Lord of the Dance

India, Tamil Nadu, Chola period, c. 950-1000

Cast copper alloy

30 X 22 1/2 X 7 in. (76.2 x 57.2 x 17.8 cm)

Anonymous gift
M.75.1

THIS PROCESSIONAL IMAGE represents the Hindu god Shiva as Lord of
the Dance surrounded by a ring of fire. In Hinduism, Shiva is worshiped as
the destroyer and restorer in a theological triad with the gods Vishnu and
Brahma, who represent preservation and creation. This form of the deity
became popular in the early tenth centun/ during the Chola period

38

(850-1278) in southern India. According to the traditional interpretation,
Shiva, spinning on one foot and trampling a midget representing ignorance,
personifies the axis of the world, his dance setting the universe into action.

As is true of certain Buddhist images showing Tantric deities, the
supernatural powers of Hindu gods are depicted with a multiplicity of arms.
In this sculpture, the upper pair of arms holds symbols of creation and
destruction — a drum and flame — while the gracefully posed lower pair
suggests reassurance and victory over ignorance. Combined, these ges-
tures signify Shiva's grace as he guides believers to the path of liberation.
Shiva's compassion is underscored by the small image personifying the
river goddess Ganga (Ganges) in the fanned strands of his hair. Shiva used
his hair to save humankind by breaking the celestial river's fall to earth.

Jagadeva (India, Gujarat, active c. 11 30-70)

SarasvatI, dated 1 1 53

Marble

47 1/4 X 193/4 X 1 1 3/4 in. (120 x 50.2 x 29.8 cm)

Gift of Anna Bing Arnold
M. 86.83

JAINISM, THE THIRD MAJOR RELIGION of India,
has been practiced continuously since the sixth
century B.C., if not earlier. Like Buddhism, it evolved
as a popular reaction against the caste-bound and
ritual-oriented Hinduism. Jainism shares with
Buddhism and Hinduism several deities, such as
Sarasvati, the goddess of learning, knowledge,
and music.

Carved in white marble, this image of Sarasvati
is the embodiment of the medieval Indian concept
of ideal feminine beauty. Elegantly poised, her
voluptuous body is rendered with a heightened
sense of fluidity and sensuality. In each of her two
upper arms she holds a lotus stem encircling a
pair of geese, a symbol of purity. Her broken lower

ASIAN ART

39

right arm would have displayed the gesture of charity or carried an ascetic's
water flask, while her lower left hand once held a book. Two small flanking
musicians allude to her role as the prime teacher of music while larger female
attendants hold honorific flywhisks. A devotee — perhaps the donor — sits in
reverence near her right foot, balanced by Sarasvati's animal mount, the
gander (now headless), on the opposite side.

The inscription on the base records that an earlier sculpture of the
goddess, dedicated to a Jain temple in 1069, was damaged in early 11 52.
The following year a nobleman named Parashurama commissioned the artist
Jagadeva to create this replacement.

Ardhanarishvara, the Androgynous Form of Shiva
and Parvati

Nepal, c. 1000

Cast copper with glass inlays

33 X 141/2 X 5 in. (83.8 x 36.8 x 12.7 cm)

From the Nasli and Alice Heeramaneck Collection, Museum Associates Purchase
M. 82.6.1

THIS EXTRAORDINARY IMAGE of Ardhanarishvara (lord who
is half woman) depicts the combined forms of the Hindu god
Shiva and his wife, Parvati. According to one myth, the Hindu
god of creation, Brahma, neglected to create women; Shiva
consequently transformed his left side into a woman. The
two halves separated but ultimately recoupled to conceive
humankind. On a domestic level, this combined form
represents the ideal state of union between husband and wife,
each representing one half of a whole. On a philosophical level, Shiva is the
perfect yogi, or liberated being, who remains detached from the world while
Parvati represents the creative energy that enlivens him. As such, the image
symbolizes the inseparability of the male and female elements of existence.
Each half of the image has distinguishing physical features and clothing.
Some aspects, such as the divided chest, are obvious references to gender,
but other details, such as the wider arc of Parvati's hip, are more subtle.
Parvati 's tiara and elaborate coiffure contrast with Shiva's crown of matted

40

hair, and the goddess's ankle-length garment differs fronn Shiva's knee-
length wrap. Certain distinctions are more iconographic in character. Shiva's
half face has a third eye in the forehead, and his raised hand holds a vajra,
or thunderbolt, while Parvati holds an ascetic's water pot.

Brahma

Indonesia, central Java, c. 800-900
Andesite

453/4 X I7V2X 12V2in. (11 6. 2x44. 5x31 .8 cm)

Gift of the 2000 Collectors Committee
M. 2000.30

HINDUISM, UNLIKE BUDDHISM, did not spread from India
to the entirety of Asia. The religion was, however, accepted
in large parts of Southeast Asia, where it became
associated with kingship and royal power. Hundreds of
stone and brick Hindu temples were built in central Java
between 750 and 950.

This consummate image of the Hindu god Brahma
originally graced a niche in a Javanese temple. Traditionally
portrayed as an ascetic, Brahma is shown here with a
crownlike mound of twisted and matted hair, enriched by
the jewels of the high born. His nature is also reflected in
the two objects that flank him. The fire altar on the left,
emitting a plume of scented smoke, refers to his role in
Vedic (proto-Hindu) sacrifices, a practice continued by the
Brahman priests of later India. The lobed water container on the right is one
used by ascetics.

Brahma has four faces, one of which is hidden at the rear. His upper
arms hold an honorific flywhisk (at right) and a circle of prayer beads with a
flower (at left). The two empty hands in front of the body display unusual
gestures, but may have once held a separate metal attribute, such as a bell.

ASIAN ART

41

Vishnu

Cambodia, Angkor, Pre Rup, Angkor period, c. 950

Sandstone

89 X 28 X 18 in. (226.1 x 71 .1 x 45.7 cm)

Gift of Anna Bing Arnold
M. 76.19

THIS IMPOSING SANDSTONE IMAGE of the Hindu god Vishnu once stood
over nine feet tall, an expression of dominating sovereignty. The four arms
originally spread outward from the enormous body, the great weight
supported by the columnar legs. The concept was daring, but the arms
that extended into space have since been lost.

The god wears a traditional Cambodian pleated garment, or sampot,
which is a single piece of cloth wrapped around the waist, pulled up
between the legs, and tucked into a belt at the back. Added pieces of
cloth suspended from the belt at the front are arranged in a decorative
manner dubbed "anchor folds" by Western art historians. Vishnu also
wears an elaborate head ornament comprising a decorated diadem, with
cloth ties knotted at the back, and a tiered crown surmounted by a jeweled
knob. Both the sampot and headdress, marked by complex patterns,
provide a strong contrast to the smooth surface of the polished, unadorned
torso, thus amplifying the physical strength of the form.

42

ASIAN ART

43

Page from a Manuscript of the Qur'an

Tunisia, probably Qairawan, Fatimid dynasty, c. 850-950
Gold and red ink on parchment, dyed blue
11 VgX 143/4 in. (28.3 X 37.5 cm)

The Nasli M. Heeramaneck Collection, Gift of Joan Palevsky
M. 86.196

¥ ^

ISUXM AROSE IN THE EARLY SEVENTH CENTURY under the leadership
of the prophet Muhammad. It is the youngest of the world's three great
monotheistic religions, following in the prophetic traditions of Judaism and
Christianity. The Qur'an (meaning "recitation" in Arabic) is the holy book
of Islam.

Calligraphy is the most highly esteemed Islamic art, perhaps because
the act of writing transmits and preserves the Qur'an. Early Qur'ans were
written in a type of angular script with letters rendered from right to left in
broad horizontal strokes. This script was well suited to the oblong format of
the parchment page. Parchment (also called vellum), made from cured and
scraped animal skin, was the preferred material for Qur'ans up to the
twelfth century, when it was replaced by paper.

Worthy of an imperial patron, this folio comes from a now partially
dispersed Qur'an written in gold on blue parchment, perhaps dyed with
indigo in emulation of Byzantine royal manuscripts and documents on
purple vellum. It may belong to a seven-volume version described in a
medieval inventory of the library of the Great Mosque in Qairawan (in

modern Tunisia), where the book
was most likely produced in the
late ninth or early tenth century.

SSkt ^ • "

e.j'.feajuj JAinf

^ jsss&^ngasU ^a.

^ m^ L. ;^ ^' c M ^d^^ L

44

Lamp

Egypt or Syria, Mamluk dynasty,

c. 1350

Free-blown and tooled glass,

enameled and gilded

H. 135/8 (34.6 cm)

William Randolph Hearst Collection
50.28.4

INSCRIPTIONS IN ISUXMIC ART
were used to convey information
and decorate surfaces. This
beautiful lamp, embellished by
rhythmic calligraphy and distinctive
ornament, was most likely produced
for a religious context. The neck of
the lamp is inscribed with the first
few words of a Qur'anic verse
(xxiv.35) that likens the light of God
to the light yielded by an oil lamp: "God is the Light of the heavens and of
the earth."

Another inscription, located at the base of the lamp, indicates that this
object was commissioned by Shaykhu al-Nasiri, whose heraldic emblem —
a red cup set between a red and black bar — is repeated on the upper and
lower sections of the lamp. This design refers to its owner's former status
as a royal cup bearer. Shaykhu built a mosque and a khanqa (Sufi
monastery) in Cairo in the mid -fourteenth century. Thus, this lamp was
most likely made for one of these structures.

ASIAN ART

45

Tile with Scrolling Floral Arabesque

Greater Iran, Timurid dynasty, c. 1400-1500
Fritware, glazed and assembled as mosaic
24 V4 X 23 V2 X 23/4 in. (61.6 x 59.7 x 7 cm)

The Madina Collection of Islamic Art, Gift of Camilla Chandler Frost
M. 2002. 1.19

THIS TILE BELONGS TO THE PERIOD of Timurid rule in Greater Iran
(1370-1506). The Timurids were the last great dynasty to emerge from the
Central Asian steppe. Their empire included modern Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan,
parts of the Caucasus, and western Central Asia. Prodigious builders, the
Timurids sponsored the construction of religious institutions and
foundations that were often built on an enormous scale and commonly
sheathed in an elaborate decorative skin of brilliant glazed tile.

In the greater Iranian world, the primary structural material was dun-
colored baked brick; thus glazed tile provided colortui embellishment. The
most complicated and time-consuming manner of fifteenth-century tile

46

I

work was "mosaic faience." Elements of the floral design of the museum's
tile were cut from glazed tiles of different colors and assembled as a
mosaic. This tile was set in place on the exterior of a building, where it
joined other tiles or panels as part of a larger, more complicated design.

Vessel with Dancing Women

Iran, Sasanian period, c. 500-700
Hammered silver with gilding
H. 6% in. (16.8 cm)

Gift of Varya and Hans Cohn
AC1 992. 152.82

THE MUSEUM'S RICH COLLECTION of pre-lslamic Iranian metalwork
includes early items cast in bronze, such as horse trappings and standard
finials made in Luristan (1350-650 b.c). Later objects such as this Sasanian
vessel were not cast but hammered from a single piece of silver. The pro-
cess was completed with repousse decoration,
raising in relief figures that were worked from the
interior of the vessel. The addition of mercury
gilding on the background emphasizes the three-
dimensionality of the primary pattern.

A dozen or more examples from this period
feature dancing females adorned with diadems,
earrings, necklaces, bracelets, anklets, and flowing
shawls. Scholars continue to debate whether the
figures represent the Zoroastrian goddess
Anahita — a votary of a vestigial cult of Dionysus —
or a celebrant of a seasonal festival observed in
Sasanian Iran.

ASIAN ART

47

Flask with a Lion Attacking an Ox,
China, late Six Dynasties period.
Northern Zhou dynasty or Sui dynasty
556-618, molded stoneware with
incised decoration and green glaze,
h. 12% in. (31 .4 cm), given in memory
of Dr. Joseph K. W. Li, AC1997.17.1

CHINA AND THE SILK ROAD

The fabled Silk Road, a series of strategic highways and byways
linl<ing rich settlements and oases from western China to
northern India and Iran, was used by missionaries and pilgrims
propagating Buddhism and Islam. The same network also
conveyed luxury goods across Asia. Chinese silks and ceramics
reached the West in return for metalwork and glass. These
imported luxuries profoundly influenced artistic traditions at

both ends of Asia.

In China, trade objects
inspired the exploration of new
forms, motifs, and materials.
An impressive flask {bianhu) in
the museum's collection
presents an almost unfiltered
Chinese translation of pre-
Islamic Sasanian Persian
design. The ceramic vessel,
now missing its shoulder lugs,
must have been inspired by an
imported leather or metal
prototype. The two faces of the
flattened clay form are covered
with a stamped and can/ed
narrative scene unlike anything
found in earlier Chinese art.
The image features three non-
Chinese figures in foreign
costume prodding an ox, lion, and cub engaged in violent
combat. As the ox gores the lion with its horns, it is being bitten
above and below by the lion and cub.

Exotic, imported forms first captivated Chinese consumers in
the fifth and sixth centuries as interactions increased with

48

Jar, China, middle Tang dynasty,
c. 700-800, nnold-blown blue glass,
h. 2V8 in. (5.4 cm), gift of Nicholas
Grindley, M. 2001 .38

foreigners along the northwestern frontier. A brief
introductory period marked by obvious copying of
foreign models was followed by a much longer
epoch in which Chinese artisans creatively adapted and
reinterpreted Central, South, and West Asian types and
explored new media such as glass and gilt silver. Thus, an
attractive cosmetic box in the museum collection is decorated
with phoenixes — a quintessential Chinese motif — and floral
scrolls that provide only a hint of foreign inspiration.

Cosmetic or Medicine Box in tine Form
of a Ciamslieii, China, middle Tang
dynasty c. 700-800, hammered silver
with chased and partially gilded
decoration, 1 ^2 x 3 V3 x 3 in. (3.8 x
7.9 x 7.6 cm), purchased with funds
provided by members of the Far
Eastern Art Council, M.2000.57

ASIAN ART

49

Jar

Japan, Aichi prefecture, Kamakura period, c. 1200-1400
Tokoname ware; coil-built stoneware with ash glaze
H. 17V4in. (43.8 cm)

Purchased with funds provided by the Museum Associates, the Frederick R. Weisman Company,

and the Far Eastern Art Council

M.80.77

THIS MASSIVE ASYMMETRICAL STORAGE or shipping jar has a broad
shoulder and narrow foot, exuding strength and solidity. Placed un-
glazed in kilns, such pieces were fired for up to two weeks. In the high
heat, the body, rich in iron, turned a vibrant red. Flying wood ash settled
on the surface, liquefied, and created rivulets of what is called a natural or
ash glaze.

Large, robust containers were made throughout the country to sen^/e
local needs. They can be linked to specific kilns by their distinctive clay
body, repertoire of shapes, and surface designs. The chestnut-red body

50

and greenish flowing glaze are typical of the assertive coil-built forms and
natural ash glazes of pots made at Tokoname, in the southwest of present-
day Aichi prefecture.

Incense Burner in the Form of an Ancient Bronze Container

China, Hebei Province, Quyang County, middle or late Northern Song

dynasty, c. 1000-1127

Ding ware; wheel-thrown stoneware with applied decoration and

transparent glaze

H. 4 1/2 in. (11.4 cm)

Purchased with funds provided by the Far Eastern Art Council in celebration of the new

Chinese Galleries

AC1 998.90.1

THE BURNING OF SPECIALLY PREPARED mixtures of woods and other
vegetal matter acquired great popularity in China by the Song dynasty
(960-1279). In palaces, temples, and scholars' retreats, the infusion of
fragrant scents transported mere mortals to a higher meditative plane. The
incense burner {lu) was an essential element in the practice.

This ivon/-toned example embodies the aesthetic sophistication of
Northern Song (960-1 127) ceramic production. Its elegant yet simple
shape — a wide cylinder encircled by pairs of raised lines set on three
delicate feet — was formed of very fine white clay. The vessel is covered in
the smooth, clear glaze typical of wares from the Ding kilns in northern
China. Only the rim is unglazed, allowing the incense burner to be placed

upside down in the kiln during firing to protect
its form from collapsing. A silver or bronze
band, now lost, would have covered the
unglazed rim and guarded against chipping.

Subtle Ding wares, produced both for the
palace and for the general market, reflect the
aesthetic refinement of China's most
discriminating audiences — the imperial
household and the urbanized, highly educated
civil servant class. The form of this incense

ASIAN ART

51

burner, based on an ancient bronze lian vessel first popular in the Han
dynasty (206 b.c-a.d. 220), further illustrates the elite interest in antiquities
fashionable during the Song dynasty.

Oval Tray with Pavilion on a Garden Terrace

China, Yuan dynasty, 1 279-1 368
Carved red lacquer on wood
91/4x63/8 in. (23.5 X 16.2 cm)

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. John H. Nessley
M. 81. 125.1

THIS SMALL TRAY FEATURES a detailed scene of two scholars relaxing on
a garden terrace. In the pavilion, an attendant watches his master nod over
a laden table. On the terrace, a servant carries a musical instrument while
following the second scholar on his way home. The natural forms,
architectural details, furnishings, and figures were derived from painted
narratives, while the stylized conventions of rosettes and meanders were
likely influenced by textile design.

The tray is a remarkable example of the pictorial qualities of Yuan
dynasty carved lacquer, which displayed amazing visual depth on small, flat
surfaces. This time-consuming method of construction and decoration
involved building up lacquer, one thin layer at a time, over a wooden core
to form a strong and stable medium for canning. By the Yuan period, the

technique was treated
with the lapidarian
expertise, superior skill,
and precise control
usually reserved for
other luxury materials
such as jade and ivory.

52

Jar with Peony Sprays and Lotuses

Korea, late Koryo dynasty, c. 1200-1392'

Wheel-thrown and shaped stoneware with carved and slip-covered ground

and glaze-painted decoration

H. 11 1/2 in. (29.2 cm)

Purchased with Museum Funds
M. 2000.15. 87

DURING THE KORYO DYNASTY,
Korean potters developed extremely
complex methods of adding color to
the surface of their wares. This jar
illustrates one of the most laborious
approaches. Exemplified by only a few
surviving examples worldwide, the
technique may have been restricted to
select pieces made at special kilns for
the exclusive use of the Korean court.
The process, resulting in bold floral
patterns rendered in a rich brown
glaze on an unglazed ground, in-
volved a series of steps. Like the few
other rare survivors, the wheel-thrown
form was gently pressed from front
and back, producing a flattened field
for decoration. The primary motifs —
peony sprays, cusped frames, lotus
scrolls, and lotus petal borders — were brushed in ink. The surface
surrounding the sketched patterns was scraped away and covered with a
buff-colored clay wash. The inked designs were then covered with an iron-
rich glaze and fired. The intense heat of the kiln set the oily brown glaze and
produced a light-colored biscuit — or unglazed surface — marked by an
intricate web of cracks.

ASIAN ART

53

Ewer with Figures

Iran, Kashan, early medieval, c. 1200-1230
Fritware, overglaze painted {mina'i)
H. 13 in. (33 cm)

The Madina Collection of Islamic Art, Gift of Camilla Chandler Frost
M, 2002. 1.7

IRANIAN POTTERS FROM THE CITY OF KASHAN introduced a
polychromatic decorative technique called mina'i (Persian for "enamel") for
luxury ceramics. This type of multicolored ornamentation was produced in a
complicated process that required at least two firings. Vessels were first
covered with an opaque white or a turquoise glaze and fired. After the initial
firing, additional decoration, painted in enamel colors (including red, black,
and white), was applied on top of the glaze. The added colors were fixed in
a second firing at a lower temperature.

Unlike some mina'i wares that illustrate scenes from the Iranian national
epic, the Shahnama (Book of kings), the museum's ewer features elaborate
decoration that defies identification. Delicately painted horsemen occupy the

upper register, while seated courtiers, a
musician, and perhaps a dancer appear in
the lower band. Together, the motifs seem to
represent "the good life." Apparently, mina'i
ware was not produced after the early
thirteenth century, yet it is one of the best
known and most popular types of medieval
Iranian ceramics among collectors today.

54

I

Foliated Platter with the
Eight Buddhist Symbols

China, Jiangxi Province,

Jingdezhen, late Yuan dynasty,

c. 1340-68

IVlolded porcelain with blue

painted decoration under

clear glaze

Diam. 17 3/4 in. (45.1 cm)

Gift of the Francis E. Fowler, Jr., Foundation

and Los Angeles County Fund

55.40

FOLLOWING THE ADVENT OF
successful porcelain production,
Chinese potters began to explore new decorative possibilities. Inspired by
Iranian practices, they painted mineral pigments directly on clay surfaces
before coating the vessels with a clear vitreous glaze and firing them. By
the fourteenth century, the Chinese porcelain industry, located in the
southeastern province of Jiangxi, was creating extremely attractive wares
enriched with deep blue patterns brushed in cobalt imported from Iran.
Such blue-and-whites proved popular both at home and abroad, with trade
facilitated by the Mongol domination of most of Asia.

Although this massive platter with a flat, foliated rim conforms to the
shape and scale of vessels used in the Islamic countries of western Asia,
the presence of ornamental motifs favored by the Chinese suggests that it
was likely made for the domestic market. A feathery wave pattern
accentuates the rim and covers the inner wall, which is also highlighted by
six cusped frames enclosing lotuses, morning glories, and melons, plants
and flowers popular in Chinese painting. The center of the platter is painted
with pie-shaped segments containing the eight Buddhist symbols indicative
of auspicious wishes.

The extraordinary popularity of Chinese porcelains throughout Asia and
Europe continued into the subsequent Ming (1368-1644) and Qing
(1644-191 1) dynasties and influenced ceramic production worldwide.

ASIAN ART

55

Jar with Dragon and Clouds

Korea, probably Kwangju, South Cholla Province, late Choson period,
c. 1700-1800

Wheel-thrown porcelain with blue painted decoration under clear glaze
H. 171/2 in. (44.5 cm)

Purchased with Museum Funds
M.2000. 15.98

PORCEUMNS WITH UNDERGUXZE
designs painted in blue were tirst
produced in Korea during the fifteenth
century when native sources of cobalt
were discovered. The relatively high iron
content of Korean cobalt yielded a
sonnewhat muddy color, however,
leading local artisans to prefer minerals
imported to Korea through China from
Iran. Due to the high cost of the foreign
pigment, only the royal household was
initially entitled to use the precious
wares. In the eighteenth century,
however, when Korea entered an age of
prosperity and renewed cultural activity,
blue-and-whites were available to a
broader range of society.
Many porcelains were produced in the late eighteenth century at the
government-controlled kilns in Kwangju, near the Choson capital of
Hanyang (modern Seoul). Court painters were frequently employed to paint
the surface designs. This robust, elegant jar features a scaly dragon with
big friendly eyes, sharp teeth, small horns, and a lively mane. Considered
auspicious throughout East Asia, the dragon symbolizes royalty and
prosperity. This boldly painted creature attests to the brush of a skillful
court artist and anticipates later decorative trends in court and folk painting.

^-~«r i^ffni*

56

Jar with Floral Scrolls

Turkey, Iznik, Ottoman period, c. 1500-1510
Fritware, underglaze painted
H. 9V2in. (24.1 cnn)

The Edwin Binney, 3rd Turkish Collection
M. 85.237.80

CHINESE CERAMICS WERE LONG ADMIRED, collected, and emulated in
the Islamic world, especially at the Ottoman court in Istanbul. Chinese blue-
and-whites proved particularly popular, influencing the development of Iznik
ware, named after the city in northwestern Anatolia where the type was
made. It is one of the most representative of Ottoman arts, comprising
architectural decoration as well as tableware. The type has a hard, dense,
artificial clay body that was covered with a brilliant white slip replicating the
effect of Chinese porcelains. The surface — embellished with floral scrolls,
arabesques, and other designs in deep cobalt blue — was ultimately
covered with a shiny, colorless glaze.

This superb Iznik jar is decorated with dynamic floral patterns of
Chinese inspiration painted in two shades of blue. The flowers appear

variously on a white ground or reserved
against blue. Jars of this type were most
likely used as storage containers and
exemplify the high aesthetic standards
of the day.

ASIAN ART

57

Ardabil Carpet

Iran, Safavid dynasty, dated 1539-40
Knotted wool pile on silk foundation
283 X 157 1/2 in. (718.8 x 400.1 cm)

Gift of J. Paul Getty
53.50.2

AMONG THE WORLD'S MOST FAMOUS works of art, this carpet and its
mate in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London were products of the
great flowering of the arts under the Safavid dynasty of Iran (1501-1732).
The carpets were probably royal gifts to the shrine at Ardabil in northwest
Iran, a site sacred to the dynasty's Shi'ite rulers. Both carpets (made in a
royal textile workshop, perhaps the one at Tabriz) are signed and dated
early in the reign of Shah Tahmasp (reigned 1524-76), a renowned arts
patron. Each carpet features the same inscription, including a couplet by
the fourteenth-century poet Hafiz: "Other than thy threshold I have no
refuge in this world. / My head has no resting place other than this
doorway. / Work of a servant of the court, Maqsud of Kashan [in] the year
946 [1539-40]." Maqsud was most likely the designer or production
supervisor, not the weaver.

The museum's carpet contains 15.5 million asymmetrical knots
(approximately 350 to the square inch) and may have taken three or four
weavers, working simultaneously, more than four years to complete.
A large central medallion with a field of overlapping floral arabesques
dominates the carpet's intricate design. This focal point is surrounded by
sixteen lobed medallions and flanked by a pair of lamps on the carpet's
longer axis.

58

ASIAN ART

59

Nushirvan Receives an Embassy from the Khaqan

Iran, Tabriz, Safavid dynasty, c. 1530-35
Ink, opaque watercolor, and gold on paper
18% X 12% in. (47.3x32.1 cm)

Gift of the 1989 Collectors Committee
M.89.55

THIS PAINTING COMES FROM A MANUSCRIPT whose size, scale, and
quality make it one of the most luxurious Islamic books ever created.
Now dispersed, the Shahnama (Book of kings) was made for Shah
Tahmasp (reigned 1 524-76) in Tabriz, the capital of the Safavid dynasty
at the time. The manuscript originally included 258 illustrations, hundreds
of illuminations, and more than one thousand pages of text, all with gold-
flecked borders. A book of this magnitude probably took several years
to complete.

The museum's illustration, with its rich colors and patterns, contrived
landscape, and gold sky, depicts a perfect world — a most suitable, if

unreal, setting for a royal audience. In Shahnama
illustrations, kings, heroes, and courtly figures
are depicted as idealized types with features that
reflect the ethnicity of the ruling elite. This
identification between ancient Iranian kings and
contemporary rulers was deliberate and
significant. The arts of the book were often
employed to further political agendas and to
justify and legitimize the ruling elite.

60

Attributed to Abu'l Hasan (India, born

1588/89, active c. 1600-1635)

Emperor Jahangir Triumphing over Poverty,

c. 1622

Ink, opaque watercolor, and gold on paper

93/3x6 in. (23.8 X 15.2 cm)

From the Nasli and Alice Heeramaneck Collection,
Museum Associates Purchase
M. 75.4. 28

THIS PAINTING IS ONE OF A NUMBER
of allegorical works devised to project the
Mughal emperor Jahangir (reigned 1605-27)
as a just ruler. At this time the emperor was
preoccupied with civil unrest and a rebellion
led by his son. The work is attributed to
Abu'l Hasan, a highly favored court artist.
The inscription in the upper right conveys the
artist's intentions: "An auspicious portrait of
his exalted majesty, who by the arrow of generosity eradicated the trace of
Daliddar — the ven/ personification of poverty — from the world and laid the
foundation for a new world with his justice and munificence."

Jahangir shoots an arrow into an emaciated old man who represents
poverty. The two cherubs holding the crown above the emperor indicate
his divine right to rule. In the upper left corner, another cherub holds an
ornamented chain reaching from heaven to earth, a sign of Jahangir's
commitment to implementing God's justice. Other symbols suggest the
larger geopolitical context that confronted Jahangir. The emperor stands
on a lion that straddles the globe, a symbol of the Mughal empire; the
lion lies peacefully beside a smaller lamb that represents Safavid Iran.
Although the depiction suggests that harmony existed between the two
empires, they were, in reality, political and commercial rivals. The globe
also functions as a nimbus for Manu, the Hindu lawgiver whose pres-
ence reflects the Hindu populace, which constituted the majority of
Jahangir's subjects.

ASIAN ART

61

Dagger of Emperor Aurangzeb

India, Mughal, dated 1660-61
Nephrite jade and steel inlaid with gold
133/4x2 in. (34.9x5.1 cm)

From the Nasli and Alice Heeramaneck Collection, Museum Associates Purchase
M. 76. 2. 7a

MUGHAL JADE WORKING was the most demanding and
accomplished form of sculptural expression in northern India
from the seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth century. An
extremely tough stone, jade can be shaped only through
abrasion and polishing rather than canning.

This dagger is a stunning example of the ornate ceremonial
weapons described as favored imperial objects in the Ma'asir-i
'AlamgJrT (The Illustrious acts of Alamgir), the official court
chronicle of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb (reigned
1658-1707). An inscription inlaid in gold on the watered steel
blade dates the dagger 1660-61 and, along with the symbolic
royal parasol, certifies that it was made for the emperor himself.
A technical tour de force that also closely approximates the
natural world, the pale green nephrite hilt is fashioned in the
form of a spirited horse's head with delicately rendered ears,
high cheekbones, open lips, and precisely detailed teeth. The
mane is colored burnt orange and represents the use of the
naturally occurring iron-stained rind of the stone. The neck of the horse is
gently rippled, making the hilt easier to hold. Aurangzeb spent much of his
life on horseback in battle or hunting. He particularly cherished his mounts
and gave them honorific names such as "Agile as the Wind." The emperor
similarly named his favorite daggers and swords with epithets such as
"World Conqueror."

62

Ewer with Dragon Handle

China, Ming dynasty, probably Jiajing period, 1522-66
Carved black and red lacquer on wood

H. 11 7/^6 in- (29 cm)

Gift of Dale and Nicole Lum
AC1 998.222,1

DURING THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY in Cliina, ewers with long narrow
spouts, arched handles, and peach-shaped cartouches were made in a
variety of materials, including gold, silver, cloisonne enamel, lacquer, and
porcelain. Many of the porcelain examples were exported and still exist
in collections in western Asia and Japan, especially Okinawa. Carved
lacquer ewers are far more rare, presumably due to their limited pro-
duction and fragility.

Despite its somewhat exotic shape, this ewer features elaborately
can/ed decoration that was particularly meaningful to a Chinese audience.
Deer, mythical single-horned qilin, and auspicious emblems allude to
wealth, virtue, and professional accomplishment. The fish spout-strut and
dragon handle represent success in the civil service exams. A scholar's

endurance throughout the grueling
examination process was compared
to a carp swimming upstream. The
ultimate reward of official appoint-
ment was symbolized by the trans-
formation of the fish into a dragon.
Undoubtedly, the ewer was made
to honor a scholar-official and may
have been used in special court-
initiated celebrations.

ASIAN ART

63

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Xiang Shengmo (China, 1592-1658)
Beckoning of Solitude (detail), dated 1626
Handscroll; ink on paper
11 V2x300in. (29.2x762 cm)

Los Angeles County Fund
60.29,2

THIS PAINTING, ABOUT TWENTY- FIVE FEET LONG, depicts an intimate
journey in the life of a recluse. The delicate details transport the viewer
along solitary mountain paths to rocky caverns and open fields. In his
inscription, the painter Xiang Shengmo writes that he took nine months to
complete the painting because he could work only at night, when he was
freed from other responsibilities.

Born to an eminent family in the Jiangnan region of south China during
the waning years of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), Xiang had a privileged
upbringing in the household of his grandfather Xiang Yuanbian, a prominent
art collector. The deft and practiced brushwork owes much to Xiang
Shengmo's study of ancient masterworks in his family's collection. As the

64

scroll is unrolled, it reveals groves of trees and rocky outcrops of
ainnost abstract fornnatlons, recalling the work of Dong Qichang, a
family friend who was the foremost scholar-official, painter-calligrapher,
and art critic of his day. Dong mentored Xiang during the creation of
this painting and wrote the title and an inscription (following the image)
in running script applauding Xiang's accomplishments.

ASIAN ART

65

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Shitao (China, 1642-1707)

Landscape, dated 1694

Leaf from an 8-leaf album; ink and

color on paper

11 X83/4 in. (27.9x22.2 cm)

Los Angeles County Fund
60,29.1d

SHITAO, DESCENDED FROM the
Ming imperial house, was born Zhu
Ruoji. In 1644, when Manchurian
forces overthrew the Ming and
founded the Qing dynasty
(1 644-1 911), a retainer saved young
Zhu from death and found refuge for
him in a series of Buddhist temples.
Henceforth, Zhu was known by the
Buddhist name Yuanji Shitao, or simply Shitao.

As a monk-artist, Shitao traveled widely, meeting artists, poets, and
even nobles at court. His views on painting and calligraphy often disagreed
with conventional practices. He defended his work, stating, "I use my own
method." His individualism is evident in his varied painting styles and
awkward calligraphy.

In the 1 690s, Shitao left the Buddhist faith to become a Daoist,
whereupon he worked as an artist in Yangzhou, an affluent commercial city
on the southeast coast. This painting is from an album of eight leaves
painted in Yangzhou. Shitao inscribed most of the images with melancholic
poems about wilderness, rain, personal failure, and aging. He dated the
last leaf 1694. Shitao 's poem (translated by Jonathan Hay) at the lower
right despondently questions his aimless wandering and confronts the
feelings of loneliness that accompany the end of life's journey: "Who shares
one's vicissitudes in the world? / In my old age I have no possessions, and
have turned crazy and stubborn."

66

Pyon Sangbyok (Korea, active c. 1750-85)

Portrait of Sctiolar-Official Yun Ponggu in l-iis Seventietli Year, dated 1 750

Hanging scroll; ink and color on silk

463/4x35 in. (118.7 x 88.9 cm)

Purchased with Museum Funds
M.2000.15.17

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PRODUCED AS U\RGE HANGING SCROLLS or smaller album images,
portraits in Confucian Korea usually showed a single subject in formal dress.
Many of the scrolls were made for display in government buildings, where
they honored learning, individual accomplishment, and public service. Others
were preserved for generations in private academies of learning or clan
ancestral halls. Treated as treasured institutional or family possessions, they
were hung on special days when the spirit and success of the deceased
were celebrated according to established ritual customs.

This portrait scroll is ascribed to a well-known artist of the Royal Painting

M

^

Bureau, Pyon Sangbyok. Here, he
illustrates his subject in an informal
robe and hat, seated on a woven
floor mat in an extremely spare
setting. The title identifies the sitter
as Yun Ponggu (1681-1767) at
seventy years of age. Yun passed
the national civil service exam-
ination in 1714 but was stripped
of official rank after an intrigue at
court in 1741 . Reinstated the
following year, he was ultimately
appointed chief of one of the six
boards of the Choson government
and lived out a respected career.

ASIAN ART

67

KOREAN COURT PAINTING

The Korean court established a royal painting bureau during the
fifteenth century. The bureau employed approximately forty artists,
including fifteen students selected by examination. Often several
generations of the same family worked as court artists. Members
of the bureau worked on a variety of official projects, including
portraits, Confucian book illustrations, architectural decoration,
porcelain designs, and military maps. Documentan/ and decorative
screens made for various palace buildings were particularly
significant assignments.

One important court screen in the museum's collection
commemorates the sixtieth birthday of the Dowager Queen Sinjong
(1808-1890). Lady Cho, as she was called before becoming a

member of the royal family, had
married a crown prince when she
was only eleven years old. Sadly,
her young husband died before
ascending the throne. The
dowager queen also outlived her
son, King Honjong (reigned
1834-49). Thus, when she
celebrated her sixtieth birthday in
1 868, a more distant descendant
had succeeded to the throne.
Sixtieth Birtliday Banquets for
Sixtieth Birthday Banquets for Dowager Dowager Queen SinjoDQ features sconcs from three different

ceremonies held within the Kyongbok Palace in Seoul. The unusual
style of the screen can be traced to earlier Chinese traditions of
illustrating ritual events. In the illustrated detail, which shows one
ceremony women perform elaborate dances in the tented forecourt
of the main audience hall. Inside the hall, another group of palace
ladies conducts ceremonial acts in front of an empty throne backed

Queen Sinjong (detail), dated 1868,
Korea, end of the Choson period, 8-
panel screen, ink, color, and gold on
silk, 53 X 144 in. (134.6 x 365.8 cm),
purchased with Museum Funds,
M. 2000.1 5.35

68

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"Elegant Gathering in the Western
Garden," Korea, late Choson period,
c. 1700-1800, 10-panel screen, ink
and color on silk, 63 x 144 in.
(160 X 365.8 cm), purchased with
Museum Funds, M.2000. 15.30

by a screen showing royal symbols — the sun and moon above
five sacred peaks — that represent the king's presence, even
though he is not shown.

Painted screens are also depicted in another court-
commissioned work in the museum's collection. Unlike Sixtieth
Birttiday Banquets for Dowager Queen Sinjong, "Elegant
Gatliering in tine Western Garden" portrays the fictional meeting
of famous Chinese scholars and statesmen of the eleventh
century. Within a large wailed garden, various figures in Chinese
scholars' robes engage in the leisurely pastimes of painting,
calligraphy, poetry, and music. This subject was particularly
popular among the educated civil sen/ants who staffed the
Korean government. Although based on Chinese models, this
rendition, like other examples signed by Korean court painters,
shows creative adaptations and the characteristic use of a large-
format folding screen.

ASIAN ART

69

Quail amid Autumn Grasses and Flowers

Japan, Momoyama period, 1573-1615

6-panel screen; ink, color, and gold leaf on paper

683/4 X 141 in. (174.6 x 358.1 cm)

Gift of Julia and Leo Krashen in honor of the tenth anniversar/ of the Pavilion for Japanese Art
AC1999. 223.1

ELEGANT PAINTINGS OF QUAIL with autumn grasses and flowers are a
trademark subject of the Tosa School, a group of painters who worked
primarily for the imperial Japanese court. The school flourished from the
sixteenth to the nineteenth centun/, creating works with delicate lines,
meticulous details, and a lavish use of expensive mineral pigments.

This Tosa screen depicts highly realistic quail and plants on a gold-leaf
decorative ground, resulting in a stunning contrast between painstaking
detail and abstract flattened space. The composition is dominated by the
delicately curved blades of autumn grasses, with pale stalks of golden

70

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pampas grass beyond. Flowers appropriate to the season — blue gentians,
field chrysanthemums, and boneset — are subtly sprinkled across the
surface. A number of quail hide among the plants, three feeling secure
enough to fall asleep.

A folding screen could be used as a room divider or privacy screen
and is equally effective viewed under diffuse daylight or when seen at night
by candlelight.

ASIAN ART

71

Ogata Kenzan (Japan, 1663-1743)

The Twelfth Month from Plates of the Twelve Months (detail)

Slab-built stoneware with underglaze blue and black, clear glaze, and

overglaze painted enamel decoration

8x7x1/2 in. (20.3 x 1 7.8 x 1 .3 cnn)

Purchased with funds provided by the Japan Business Association and the Far Eastern Art Council
M.84.64.12

OGATA KENZAN WAS THE FIRST
higliiy educated and cultivated
Japanese artist-nnerchant to operate a
ceramic workshop. He created a new
style of painterly wares exemplified
here by a rare, intact set of twelve
seasonal dishes originally intended for
food presentation in the tea ceremony

The top, bottom, and sides of
each plate are enriched with brushed
embellishment. The upper surfaces,
painted in delicate tones, feature
landscape vignettes appropriate to specific months. The images are
inspired by the poetry of the nobleman Fujiwara no Teika. Composed in
1214, the lines have been written by Kenzan on the bottom of the plates.
Pale cobalt-blue wisteria patterns ornament the outer walls.

The twelfth plate from the set is decorated with a painting of mandarin
ducks floating on a frigid pond. The poem reads: "Mandarin Ducks / The
snow falls on the ice of the pond / On which I gaze; / Piling up, as does
this passing year, on all those passed / And on the feathered coat of the
mandarin duck, / The 'bird of regret.'"

72

Hanging Flower Vase in the Form of a Quiver

Japan, Saga prefecture, Edo period, Enpo-Kyoho eras, 1673-1736
Nabeshima ware; slab-built porcelain with molded, modeled, cut, and
incised decoration, and celadon glaze
141/2x7 in. (36.8 X 17.8 cm)

Gift of the 1995 Collectors Committee
AC1 995.55.1

THIS HANGING FLOWER VASE was displayed in the center of a
tokonoma, or art alcove, a place of honor in a traditional Japanese room.
Inspired by the shape of a fourteenth-centun/ leather quiver, it evokes the
samurai warrior values of bravery, endurance, and loyalty. It might have
been used only once a year, on the Boys' Day Festival held on the fifth day
of the fifth month in the lunar calendar, when irises are in full bloom. On this
day, families celebrated the warrior virtues and hoped their sons would
embody them. The only known intact example of its kind, this vase

matches a fragment excavated at
Okawachi, an early-eighteenth-century
Nabeshima kiln.

Nabeshima porcelains were produced
in present-day Saga prefecture in southern
Japan. They are unrivaled in their abstract
designs, delicate forms, and pure glaze
colors. The Nabeshima kilns were under
the exclusive control of the ruling daimyo
(local lord), who either used the wares
himself or gave them as gifts to other
feudal lords. They were not made for
sale. Production was closely supervised,
technical secrets were carefully guarded,
and less-than-perfect pieces were
destroyed. The result was an extremely
limited number of porcelains of
superb quality.

ASIAN ART

73

I

Katsushika Hokusai (Japan, 1760-1849)

South Wind, Clear Dawn from Thirty-six Views of IVlount Fuji, c. 1830-31

Color woodblock print

10 X 143/8 in. (25.4 X 36.5 cm)

Gift of the Frederick R. Weisman Company
M.81.91.1

THIS PRINT, OFTEN CALLED RED FUJI, is the greatest design of Hokusai's best-
known series. Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji. The series, eventually comprising
forty-six views, featured the most famous landmark of Japan in all seasons,
scenic variations, and atmospheric conditions.

South Wind, Clear Dawn is the only print in the series that shows the
mountain without human figures. The tense asymmetry of the composition results
from three colors and a single outline, the product of Hokusai's long study and
experimentation with form. This is a spectacular impression of this celebrated
print, its colors retaining their original vibrancy. Hokusai's works had a deep and
lasting effect not only on Japanese art but also on modern Western art.

74

Mochizuki Hanzan [Haritsu II] (Japan, active c. 1750-1800)

Stationery Box with Pheasant

Wood with lacquer and various inlays, including pottery, mother-of-pearl,

horn, lead, pewter, and stag antler

4V2X lOVgX ll^/gin. (11.4x25.7x30.2 cm)

Purchased with funds provided by the Far Eastern Art Council and friends of Virginia Atchley in

honor of her ninetieth birthday

M.2002.4a-b

THIS STATIONERY BOX, created from a spectacular piece of heavily
knotted cedar or male mulberry wood, features a variety of inlay materials
and lacquer techniques. The maker, Mochizuki Hanzan, was inspired by
Ogawa Haritsu (1663-1747), an earlier master of inlay and three-
dimensional effects in lacquer design. Haritsu, in turn, had looked to the
Rimpa School of painters, potters, and lacquer makers for inspiration.

The lid features a horned pheasant amid ferns and flowers associated
with early spring. The pheasant is a symbol of nobility; when paired with
spring plants it signifies richness and plenty. The design continues around
the sides of the box. The interior, decorated by an unknown lacquer artist
about one hundred years after the completion of the outside, features a
silver-and-gold design of crows and a cherry tree on a windy day. The

realistic depiction of the
blossoming cherry is enriched
by the dark silhouettes of the
crows on the modulated silver
and gold-streaked background.

ASIAN ART

75

NETSUKE: TREASURES IN MINIATURE

Kimono, the traditional form of Japanese dress, had no pockets.
A woman could tuck small items into her sleeves, but men,
wearing a differently designed garment, chose to hang portable
personal effects from a cord attached to the sash of the robe. A
small toggle, called a netsuke, was used to keep the cord from
slipping through the sash.

Because netsuke were intended to function in this way, they
were necessarily small and compact. Most were made of ivory or
wood, but other durable materials — including stag antler, glass,
porcelain, stoneware, cloisonne enamel, lacquer, and amber —
were also used. Netsuke were always carved to hang naturally
and show their best side. Craftsmen worked within these
restrictions to depict subjects that evoked the interests of their
patrons as well as favorite historical, mythological, genre, or
natural themes.

Although the earliest netsuke date from the seventeenth
century, the art form matured in the eighteenth and first half of
the nineteenth century, spawning a vast number of themes and
styles. As Western men's clothing increasingly replaced kimono at
the end of the nineteenth century, the purchasing of netsuke
became primarily an activity of connoisseurs. Ironically, some of
the finest examples were made after netsuke ceased to be
objects of everyday use.

The museum's Bushel! Collection displays a nearly
encyclopedic array of works from various periods, carvers,
locales, and materials. Signature pieces include Dancing Fox,
who turns into a coquettish woman to seduce travelers and
monks; Bundle of Firewood, carved from a single block of wood
by Soke; and a superb rendering of Baku, the legendary animal
who eats nightmares.

76

Soko [Morita Kisaburo] (Japan,
1879-1943), Bundle of Firewood,
boxwood, 1 ^5/ig X 1 V4 X 1 in.
(4.9 X 3.2 X 2,5 cm), Raymond and
Frances Bushell Collection,
M.90.186.12

Dancing Fox, Japan, Edo period,
c. 1700-1800, ivory with dark staining
and sumi (ink), 2''3/ie x 1 V^q x ^^/-^q in.
(7.1 x 2.7 X 2.3 cm), Raymond and
Frances Bushell Collection,
AC1 998.249.69

Attributed to Gechu (Japan, active 18th
century), Bal<u, ivory with staining, sumi
(ink), and traces of red pigment, 3^/4 x
1 5/g X 1 3/-ie in. (9.5 X 4.1 X 3.0 cm),
Raymond and Frances Bushell Collection,
AC 1998.249.63

ASIAN ART

77

Moriguchi Kako (Japan, born 1909)
Kun'en, dated 1968
Paste-resist dyeing on silk crepe
63^/^6 X 5013/^6 in- (161 X 129 cm)

Gift of the 1 999 Collectors Committee
AC1999.113.1

KYOTO TEXTILE ARTIST MORIGUCHI KAKO revitalized the traditional
paste-resist dyeing technique known as yuzen and was designated a
"Living National Treasure" by the Japanese government in 1967. Developed
during the Genroku era (1688-1704) of the Edo period (1615-1868), yuzen
permitted the direct application of dyes on silk with a brush. This
revolutionary technique helped to establish kimono as a highly respected
format for Japanese artists.

Moriguchi created Kun'en (Fragrant garden) in 1968 at the height of
his career. This "wearable painting" is embellished with a single chrysan-
themum blossom that dramatically covers the entire surface of the kimono.
The petals gradually increase in length and width as the blossom spirals
and swirls to the outer limits of the garment. Each petal was precisely
drawn with pale blue water-soluble ink {aobana) and then painstakingly
outlined with a rice paste. The blue ink was then washed away, and each
petal was filled with rice paste to reserve it in white while dyes were
brushed on, a process allowing no room for error. Within the interstices
of the petals, Moriguchi employed his signature makinori (scatter paste)
technique, a lost process that he successfully reinvented. It adds
an effervescent effect that gives depth to the overall design. Because of
these meticulous procedures, the garment took almost five months to
complete. The final result is an extremely refined kimono, at once
traditional and contemporary.

78

ASIAN ART

79

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EUROPEAN ART

I

82

Red-Figure Neck-Amphora with Libation of Triptolemos

Attributed to the Hector Painter

Greece, Attica, c. 440-430 B.C.

Ceramic

H. 19V4 in. (49 cm); diam. lOVg in. (25.8 cm)

William Randolph Hearst Collection
50.8.23

THE FINEST GREEK VASES were produced in tine fifth century B.C., when
this amphora was made, and can be attributed to a variety of artists.
Based on the style of draftsmanship, this vase is one of approximately a
dozen works attributed to the Hector Painter. The designation derives from
the artist's identifying piece, or "name vase," depicting the departure of
Hector, the legendary son of King Priam of Troy which is now in the
collection of the Vatican. Originally designed to serve as a wine container or
decanter, the amphora is painted in the red-figure style, which was adopted
around 530 b.c, and rapidly superseded the black-figure style.

According to myth, the goddess Demeter chose the demigod
Triptolemos to travel the world and teach the Greeks the skills of
agriculture. Briefly represented on Attic vases as a man seated on a cart,
Triptolemos was depicted by 440 b.c. as a heroic youth riding in a heavenly
chariot, serving as a symbol of the civility of the Athenian world. This vase
shows Triptolemos receiving a libation from Persephone, daughter of
Demeter, who lowers her long torch in a gesture of homage and pours
wine from a spouted vessel into his phiale (shallow drinking bowl). Demeter
stands behind him, bearing a sheaf of wheat and wearing a polos on her
head, symbols of fecundity On the reverse side of the amphora, a woman
(possibly a priestess) extends a phiale to two youths, perhaps a worldly
enactment of the mythological scene.

EUROPEAN ART 83

ANCIENT EGYPT

In addition to works of art that fall neatly witlnin the broad cate-
gories of this book — Asian, European, Latin American, American,
and Modern and Contemporary art — LACMA possesses signif-
icant holdings from the continent of Africa. These include works
from the ancient civilization of Egypt, Islamic centers, and the
more recent traditional cultures of the sub-Saharan regions of

the continent. Two objects from the
Egyptian collection are described here,
complementing the Classical works of
art in this section.

Round-Topped Stela of luf-er-bak
depicts an Eighteenth Dynasty Egyptian
noble and members of his family
participating in a funerary banquet.
More banqueters appear in the register
below. The figures, rendered in delicate,
shallow relief, are shown in the com-
posite perspective favored by ancient
Egyptian artists. In this method, figures
are represented through a combination
of frontal and profile views. Although
well aware of more sophisticated
drawing techniques, Egyptian artists
believed that simultaneously displaying
Round-Topped stela of luf-er-bak. multiple points of view provided the most complete and definitive

gypt, mi - t ynasty, c. - record of the subject. Here, the eyes are shown frontally, defined

1353 B.C., limestone, 26^/4 x 17 V4 in.

(67.9 X 43.8 cm), purchased with funds by beautifully preserved can/ed double lines and pigment
provi e y 1 erg, indicating the pupils. Originally, the entire surface was painted,

and traces of pigment are still visible in the wigs and hieroglyphic
texts. The stela, which was placed within a tomb as a permanent
monument and a request for perpetual offerings, reminded
visitors of the achievements of the tomb owner.

84

Ibis Processional Standard, Egypt, Late
period, 26th Dynasty, 664-525 B.C.,
bronze, 15 x 11 V4 x % in. (38.1 x
28.6 x 1 .6 cm). Art Museum Council
Fund, M.91.73

Another artistic strategy informed the creation of the bronze
Ibis Processional Standard, a depiction of Thoth, the Egyptian
god of intelligence and writing. This object was carried by priests
during ceremonial processions as the emblem, or standard, of a
specific geographic region. Following the unification of Upper and
Lower Egypt around 3000 B.C., the country was divided into forty-
two administrative districts (nomes), each signified by regional
deities and their insignia. The ibis sensed as the standard for an
eastern Delta nome surrounding the town of Hermopolis, which
was the main cult center of Thoth. The artist chose to represent
the three-dimensional figure of the ibis by this flattened form,
opting for a strong graphic image, thus enhancing the object's
legibility as a processional standard. Nome standards are shown
on a wide range of Egyptian objects. They first appear on pre-

dynastic stone palettes and are later
found on royal statuary and in religious
scenes from tombs and temples. The
sureness of its outline, the subtle con-
touring of its body and the exquisite
attention to detail mark the Ibis
Processional Standard as the work
of a highly accomplished artist.

EUROPEAN ART

85

Beaker with a Theatrical Scene

Roman Empire, probably Egypt or
Syria-Palestine, 50-100
Free-blown, painted, and gilt glass
H. 5% in. (14.3 cm); rim diam. 3V2 in.
(8.9 cm)

Gift of Hans Cohn
M. 87. 113

THIS RARE PAINTED GLASS VESSEL is the
only known example of a theatrical scene
depicted in classical art. Four actors from a
play of the Attic New Comedy — a man and
a woman, apparently in a drunken state,
accompanied by a slave and a servant boy —
look expectantly at a closed door. The
fragmentary inscription may have originally
included about 150 Greek letters. It appears
to refer to a scene involving drinking and erotic
adventures. Although the specific play or sketch is unknown, the subject
is comparable to other Roman burlesques that imitate or borrow themes
commonly found in Greek comedic theater. It has been suggested that a
scene from Meander's lost comedies might have served as inspiration.

Blown from an almost colorless, transparent glass, the flat-based beaker
has since weathered to a cloudy transparency. Restorations include about
one-fifth of the vessel, including the base, nearly all of the rim, and portions
of the body. A group of Roman painted vessels, believed to be of Egyptian
manufacture, were found in the cache of a local chieftain at Begram in
Afghanistan. Painted glass was also produced in Syria-Palestine, which
must be considered as a second likely source.

86

The Hope Athena

Roman Empire, Ostia, 100-200, after a Greek original

of the late 5th century b.c, school of Pheidias

Marble

H. 86 in. (218.4 cm)

William Randolph Hearst Collection, formerly Hope Collection
51.18.12

THIS FIGURE OF ATHENA WAS EXCAVATED in Ostia, the port of Rome, in
1797, along with the museum's statue of Hygieia, goddess of health. Both
once stood in large niches in the walls of a palace constructed during the
Antonine period (138-161). Their size and commanding presence also

indicate that they were intended to be viewed within an
impressive architectural setting.

The sculptures were acquired by Thomas Hope
(1769-1831), British architect, designer, and collector of
antiquities, who saw in the Athena the reflection of the
great chryselephantine (gold and ivory) cult statue made
for the Parthenon by Pheidias, the renowned fifth-
century Greek sculptor. The Athena is possibly the work
of one of Pheidias's students. This later Athena — the so-
called Hope-Farnese type after the Hope statue and the
other fairly complete replica in Naples — is reproduced in
many Roman copies and is considered to be one of the
most beautiful representations of the goddess.

This Athena originally held a spear in her left hand,
and in her right, a Nike, the winged personification of
victory. Extensive restorations, ordered by Thomas
Hope after his acquisition of the work in 1804, included
replacement of the Athena's missing arms and
emblems. These additions were removed in the 1 920s,
and during the past decade, conservation treatments
have attempted to return the Athena to the condition
as excavated.

EUROPEAN ART

87

stained Glass Panel with Angel

The Protais Master of Sees

(France, active in Normandy,

c. 1260-85)

Made in Lower Normandy, France,

c. 1270-85

Glass and metal

Diam. 32 in. (81.3 cm)

William Randolph Hearst Collection
45.21.12a

PRODUCED AT THE ZENITH
of stained glass-making in France, this
panel shows the brilliant coloring and expressive design characteristic of
the famous glass at the cathedrals of Chartres and Le Mans. An angel is
dramatically posed within the confines of the trefoil format. Its vigorous
sense of movement is conveyed through the swooping action and the
erratic line of the censer chain, while its powerful image is enhanced by the
highly saturated coloring of the glass.

Along with its companion panel at the museum, this angel was originally
set into stone trefoil-shaped tracery high up in the central window of the
axial chapel of Sees Cathedral, Normandy. Both panels flanked the main
quatrefoil window showing the Virgin and Child enthroned. Following the
restoration of the cathedral in the late nineteenth century, each of the panels
was converted into a circular format by adding spandrels of grisaille glass.

Rosso Fiorentino [Giovanni Battista di Jacopo]

(Italy, Florence, 1494-1540)

Virgin and Cliild with Saints Joiin the Baptist and

Elizabeth and Two Angeis, c. 1521

Oil on panel

631/2x47 in. (161.3x 119.4 cm)

Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Herbert T. Kalmus
54.6

88

THIS IS ONE OF A HANDFUL of paintings by Rosso in American
collections. A puzzling connposition, only its attribution has not been put to
question (although the painting was years ago attributed to Michelangelo).
The picture can be understood only as a large-scale sketch or ebauche
that is missing crucial elements. The exaggerated features of the figures
(which could have been made less disturbing had Rosso completed the
painting) prevented some critics from recognizing in them the traditional
protagonists of an often-represented grouping of saints around the figures
of Man/ and the Christ child.

Rosso may have been aware of a composition of the same subject by
Andrea del Sarto (before 1516, Louvre), from which he appears to have
derived both his own composition and individual characteristics for his
figures. The panel belongs to an early phase of his career, when he and
other artists were formulating the unconventional style derived from
Michelangelo known as Mannerism.

EUROPEAN ART

89

MAIOLICA

Renaissance art includes a wide range of decorative arts,
including stained glass, Limoges enamels, Palissyware, silver,
kunstkammer works of art, and maiolica (tin-glazed earthenware),
which constitutes the most significant part of the museum's
collection. Produced in Italy since the twelfth century, maiolica
was raised to a significant art form during the Renaissance. The
museum is particularly rich in the lustered dishes from Deruta
dating from around 1 500 to 1 520, wares that are boldly painted
with large patterned borders and with scenes,

armorials, and mottoes or initials relating to the
original owner. Most of these pieces are
large dishes known as piatti di pompa,
which were originally intended for
display on the wall. Indeed,
decoration rather than function

Plate from the Pucci Service with
Palinurus Falling Overboard, Francesco
Xante Avelli da Rovigo (Italy, Urbino,
active 1 528-45), made in Urbino,
1532, tin-glazed earthenware,
diann. 11 % in. (28.9 cm),
William Randolph Hearst Collection,
50.9.28

seems to be the intention for most
of these maiolica tablewares, and
this is also true of the other main
part of the collection, the istoriato, or
narrative, wares from Urbino. Again
mostly dishes, these pictorial wares
represent a high point in Italian Renaissance
ceramic art. The artists employed a brilliant palette of
colors, skillfully painting rim to rim with scenes taken from
classical mythology, modern popular legends, and the Bible.
These istoriato wares often include the signature of their painters,
and the museum has several fine examples by Francesco Xanto
Avelli da Rovigo, one of the foremost artists working in Urbino.

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90

Dish with a Young Woman, made in
Deruta, c. 1500-1530, tin-glazed
earthenware, diatn. 16 V4 in. (41.3 cm),
William Randolph Hearst Collection,
50.9.8

Dish with Scene from Ariosto 's "Orlando
Furioso, " Francesco Xanto Avelli da
Rovigo (Italy, Urbino, active 1528-45),
made in Urbino, 1531, tin-glazed
earthenware, diam. 17 3/4 in. (45.1 cm),
William Randolph Hearst Collection,
49.26.3

i

EUROPEAN ART

91

Dalmatic

Holland, c. 1570

Colored wools and silk in interlocking tapestry weave

Cb. 43V4in. (109.9 cm)

Gift of Mrs. Ellie Stern, Bullocks Wilshire, the Costume Council, and Mrs. Madeline B. Nelson
M. 79. 117

THIS DALMATIC IS PART OF A RARE connplete set of ecclesiastical
vestments surviving the troubled period of the Reformation in sixteenth-
century Holland. The set can be dated to 1570 from an inscription woven
in the banderoles on one of its companion pieces at the Metropolitan
Museum of Art. The motto translates: "We are bent, not broken by the
waves," a particularly appropriate sentiment for Dutch Catholics. From the
1 560s they had endured Protestant hostility against the Church and its
clergy a situation that prevailed in Utrecht until 1 580, when Roman
Catholic public worship was suppressed.

The dalmatic bears the coats of arms of the van der Geer and van

92

Culenborch families of Utrecht, indicating that the set was probably
commissioned for use in a private chapel, a timely decision in light of
events. The biblical imagery is also fitting; the bull rushes rising above the
waves allude both to the inscription and to Moses, who led the Israelites
out of their bondage in Egypt.

The message of salvation has been interpreted with virtuosity. The
dalmatic is woven in colored wools in a flat tapestry weave, a technique
used extensively in the Low Countries but usually for large "picture"
tapestry wall hangings. Combining this technique with embroidery, the
weaver has created an illusion of pile velvet on the richly textured surface.

One of a Pair of Tazzas

Jean Delahaye (France, active 1579-1611) and

Nicolas de Villiers II (France, active 1582-1613)

Made in Paris, 1 583-84 and later

Silver gilt

Diam. 11 1/2 in. (29.2 cm)

Gift of Selim K. Zilkha
M.91 .347.2

PARISIAN SILVER OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY is extremely uncommon,
most having been lost due to wars and changes in fashion. The only other
known examples made by Jean Delahaye and Nicolas de Villiers II are in
the Vatican collection. This highly decorated silver was intended for display

EUROPEAN ART

93

on the sideboard or buffet on grand ceremonial occasions rather than for
use and was probably part of a larger service.

This tazza from the museum's pair is chased with a scene after
engravings by Philips Galle (1537-1612), which in turn were derived from
hunting tapestries designed by Jan van der Straet (1523-1605) for the
Medici in Florence in the 1 560s. The scene is emblematic of one of the four
major continents, suggesting that the museum's tazzas were originally part
of a set of four. On this example, Europe is represented by a game hunt in
a forest landscape. It is likely that this pair survived because it was
exported in the mid-seventeenth century to England, where silver tended to
be handed down in family collections rather than being refashioned
according to the prevailing style.

Ugo da Carpi (Italy, active in Venice, Rome, and Bologna,

active c. 1502-32)

Diogenes (after Parmigianino), c. 1527

Chiaroscuro woodcut from 4 blocks

19Vi6 X 1311/15 in. (48.4 x 34.8 cm)

Gift of Philippa Calnan in memory of her mother iVlatilda Looser Calnan
M. 2001. 176

UGO DA CARPI'S DIOGENES is the artist's masterpiece, a tour de force of
the medium of chiaroscuro woodcut, a form of printing that uses multiple
wood blocks to create the effect of a wash drawing. Diogenes is based on
a drawing provided by Ugo's contemporary Francesco Parmigianino,
whose name appears along with Ugo's on the book in the lower left
corner — clear testament of the work's collaborative nature. Ugo's use of
broad areas of color and subtly defined tones reflects his direct experience
of Raphael and his workshop in Rome after Ugo moved there in 1517. The
figure of Diogenes, with its bold foreshortening and complex pose, reveals
the unmistakable influence of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel frescoes.

The museum's impression of the print is an early one made from four
blocks: a key block in black ink, defining the image's outlines, and three
tone blocks in different shades of green. Ugo claimed to have invented the
technique of chiaroscuro woodcut, although this was a false boast; he was,

94

however, the first to sign his blocks and among the first to copyright his
designs. There are only fourteen docunnented prints by the artist, although
many others have been attributed to him.

The ancient Greek philosopher Diogenes taught that the virtuous life is
the simple life. He discarded conventional comforts and chose to live in a
barrel (visible in the background of Ugo's print). The plucked chicken is a
reference to Aristotle's description of man as a "featherless biped."

EUROPEAN ART

95

Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn (Holland, 1606-1669)

The Raising of Lazarus, c. 1630

Oil on panel

37 15/^6 X 32 in. (96.4 x 81 .3 cm)

Gift of H. F. Ahmanson and Company in mennory of Howard F. Ahmanson
M. 72.67, 2

96

THE RAISING OF LAZARUS BELONGS to Rembrandt's early years in
Leiden, his native city, where he set up a studio after having briefly studied in
Amsterdann under Pieter Lastman. The strong contrasts of dark and light
areas and the expressiveness of the composition can certainly be attributed
to the distant influence of Caravaggio, made available to Rembrandt through
the works of the Utrecht painters who had brought back to Holland the
innovations and spirit of the Italian master. Rembrandt, however, does not
focus the strongest light on the biblical story's main protagonists, Christ and
Lazarus, whom he keeps in half-shadows, but shines it instead on the face
of Mary Magdalene, thus shifting the narrative to the witnesses of the scene
and by extension to the viewers of the picture.

Rembrandt often altered the character, if not the very essence, of biblical
representations by introducing innovations whose strength lies in their
subtlety For instance, he sets the story, usually represented in broad
daylight, in a somber cave or catacomb. Likewise, he replaces the image of
a triumphant and confident Christ with that of a miracle worker whose
expression betrays amazement at his own deeds and power. It is not known
for whom Rembrandt may have painted this work, which even so early in his
career shows distinctive originality.

Georges de La Tour (France, 1 593-1 652)

The Magdalen with the Smoking Flame, c. 1638-40

Oil on canvas

46 Vi6 X 36 Vq in. (1 1 7 X 91 .8 cm)

Gift of The Ahmanson Foundation
M.77.73

A NATIVE OF LORRAINE, a province with a significant school of painting,
Georges de La Tour remains a mysterious, almost mythical, figure. He never
left his native province, yet the sophistication of his paintings, which found
favor with the most discerning collectors, is indisputable. Their stark
compositions and realism, as well as the artist's representation of artificial
sources of light, betray a link to Caravaggio that can be explained by La
Tour's familiarity with the work of Jean Le Clerc, himself a follower of the
Italian master.

EUROPEAN ART 97

La Tour painted the subject of the Magdalen on several occasions. Two
paintings, respectively in New York and Washington, D.C., are particularly
close in size and connposition to the museum's picture, yet the starkness
and austere purity of the Los Angeles Magdalen is exceptional. La Tour's
compositions achieve their power through a reduction of narrative effects.
Here, while the objects — each one carefully detailed — situate the image in
the broader context of a vanitas picture — a well-established genre at the
time of the Counter- Reformation — the focus is in the meditative gaze of the
Magdalen. Although La Tour set the impressive skull in the center of his
composition, he elevates to the upper tier of the canvas his true subject:
the glowing space around the smoking flame, symbolic in the words of
Saint John of the Cross of "the living flame of love."

98

Michiel Sweerts (Flanders, 1618-1664, active in Italy)

Plague in an Ancient City, c. 1 653(?)

Oil on canvas

463/4 X 67 V4 in. (1 1 8.7 x 1 70.8 cm)

Gift of The Ahmanson Foundation
AC1 997. 10.1

MICHIEL SWEERTS, A FLEMISH ARTIST active in Rome, became known
as a painter of genre scenes — a specialty among Northern painters in
Italy — and of particularly arresting portraits. Nothing in his oeuvre, however,
prefigured the scale and metaphysical depth of this painting, his undisputed
masterpiece. Although a realistic description of illness and death, the
painting is also an allegory of human fate and salvation. Death, decay, and
sorrow occupy the fore- and middle ground of the composition. In the
center of the picture, a standing man, sometimes identified as a
philosopher, is flanked by a seminude female figure — perhaps an allegory.
His gesture is relayed by an ancient priest on the steps of a temple, inviting

EUROPEAN ART

99

the viewer to direct his or her attention to the shrine. The picture contrasts
life and death, darkness and light, despair and redemption.

Renaissance and Baroque artists who lived through plague epidemics
were occasionally commissioned to paint commemorative pictures or ex-
votos, drawing their inspiration from biblical stories or the writings of
ancient historians. Sweerts's Plague appears to have been painted shortly
after an epidemic that decimated Rome in 1648, yet the circumstances of
its commission are not known today.

Sweerts was a profoundly devout and somewhat tormented man who
may have experienced a religious crisis around the time he painted this
work. Shortly afterward he left Rome, eventually joining a group of French
missionaries bound for the East, and died in unknown circumstances in
Goa, India. It has been argued that this singular painting may have
indicated a new, classical departure for Sweerts. It also illustrates how
sensitive he was to the metaphysical currents of his time.

Carlo Maratta (Italy, Rome, 1625-1713)
Study for an Allegorical Figure of Africa, c. 1 674-77
Red chalk on paper, laid down
17 X 12% in. (43.2x31.4 cm)

Purchased in memory of Lorser Feitelson with funds provided by the Graphic Arts Council,

Dart Industries, Inc., and Ticor Corporations

M.79.10

CARLO MARATTA WAS ONE OF THE MOST ACTIVE and influential artists
of seventeenth-century Italy, and one of the finest draftsmen of his age.
In contrast to many of his Baroque contemporaries, his art was devoted
to a classical clarity and simplicity that had originated two hundred years
earlier with Raphael.

In 1674 Maratta was commissioned to fresco the audience hall of the
Palazzo Altieri, the Roman family home of Pope Clement X. The central
section of the vault was devoted to An Allegory of Clemency (an allusion to
the pope's name), and Maratta planned to fill the rest of the ceiling with
allegorical personifications of Christian virtues and representations of the

100

four parts of the known world (Europe, America, Africa, and Asia). Only /An
Allegory of Clemency was completed. The rest of Maratta's decorative
scheme is known only through preparatory drawings, such as this bold and
powerful red-chalk study.

Somewhat whimsically, the allegorical figure of Africa wears an elephant's
head as a helmet, while a lion, a crocodile, and a snake (all associated with
the then barely explored continent) accompany her. Maratta's sense of humor
extends to the putto kneeling in the foreground, who gestures in alarm at the
approaching snake. The four continents were meant to be painted in the
ceiling's spandrels, thus the drawing's unusual shape.

EUROPEAN ART

101

FRENCH OIL SKETCHES

Oil sketch is a generic term used to describe paintings, usually
intimate in scale, that represent various moments of an artist's
creative process. Some may be first thoughts for large
compositions, wall-size paintings, or frescoes; others are
fragmentary studies for details of larger works. Another category

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Simon Vouet (France, 1590-1649),
Model for Altarpiece in Saint Peter's,
1625, oil on canvas, 16 x 24^4 in.
(40.6 X 61 .6 cm), The Ciechanowiecki
Collection, gift of The Ahmanson
Foundation, M.2000. 179.2

is landscape studies, executed from nature long before the
Impressionists made this approach to painting a trademark.
Unfinished paintings, or ebauches, are yet another variety of
oil sketches.

Although artists often painted studies for later compositions,
oil studies were usually not intended for public display or private
collection. Starting in the eighteenth century, however, partially
under the influence of Flemish or Venetian artists who had
achieved fame for handling paint with spirited freedom, artists
devoted more attention to oil sketches, or in some cases, painted
in a free manner that obliterated the artificial division between the
styles of the study and of the finished work. Likewise, collectors
began acquiring sketches, not only as documents, but also for
their aesthetic quality

102

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Baron Frangois Gerard (Italy, Rome,
1770-1837, active in France), The 10th
of August, 1792, 1794, oil on canvas,
42 X 563/4 in. (106.7 x 144.1 cm). The
Ciechanowiecki Collection, gift of The
Ahmanson Foundation, M.2000. 179.36

The museum's collection of oil sketclies includes works
ranging from seventeenth-century artists Simon Vouet and
Louis de La Hyre to the nineteenth century's Theodore
Rousseau, Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, and Felix Ziem, with a
particularly impressive representation of Neoclassical artists,
such as Baron Gerard, whose unfinished The 10th of August,
1 792 is especially noteworthy

Frangois Boucher (France, 1703-1770),
Project for a Cartouche: An Allegory of
Minerva, Fame, History, and Faith
Overcoming Ignorance and Time,
c. 1727, oil on canvas, 20'' 74 x 24 ■'/2 in.
(51 .4 X 62.2 cm), purchased with funds
provided anonymously in memory of
Dr. Charles Henry Strub by exchange,
ACI 998.1 48.1

EUROPEAN ART

103

Bed Hanging with Pegasus and the Nine Muses

Italy, c. 1700

Silk and metallic thread embroidery on plain-weave silk ground

134 1/2 X 131 in. (341 .6x332.7 cm)

Purchased with funds provided by the Costume Council, Richard and Lenore Wayne, the Costume
and Textiles Department, Inez K. Bell, Boyd and Helena Krout, Robinsons-May, Alice and Nahum
Lainer, Jacqueline and Arthur Burdorf, Mr. and Mrs. William M. Carpenter, Eva R Ell<ins, Linda and
Jim Freund, Nelly and Jim Kilroy, Maggie Pexton Murray, Tern/ and Dennis Stanfill, Mr. and Mrs.
David Sydorick, Mrs. Carl W. Barrow, Genevieve W. and Marvin M. Chesebro, Dorothy Cutler, Mrs.
Ernest M. Lever, and Mr. and Mrs. H. Grant Theis
AC1998.248.1

UNTIL THE END OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, beds were the most
important piece of household furniture, and textiles were their most
valuable component. In wealthy households, the main bedroom, which also
served as a reception room, and its decorative program reflected the
family's status. Possibly a wedding gift, the museum's hanging was part of
an elaborate set of bed furnishings.

References to the ideal aristocratic pursuits of poetry and the arts
appear on the hanging. At the top, the winged horse Pegasus stnkes
Mount Helicon, causing the Hippocrene spring of poetic inspiration to flow.
Mount Helicon is the home of the nine Muses, who are arrayed around the
hanging in individual landscapes. The figures are surrounded by an exotic
and sometimes fanciful assortment of fountains, plants, animals, birds, and
insects. Sources for these images included Renaissance interpretations of
Roman domestic wall decoration and printed emblem books. Emblems,
allegorical designs expressing an abstract thought in visual form, are
closely related to poetry. Although the late sixteenth century marked the
height of interest in emblems, they remained part of an aristocrat's
education well into the eighteenth century.

A masterpiece of the embroiderer's art, this hanging was the product of
professional workshops. The delicate shading used to render flesh tones
and the subtle handling of volume could be achieved only by a highly
experienced needleworker.

104

EUROPEAN ART

105

Domenico Guidi (Italy, Rome, 1628-1701)
Portrait of Pope Alexander VIII, 1 690
Gilded terracotta on gilded wood socle
36 V4 (including socle) x 32 ''/2 x 17V2 in.
(92.1 X 82.6 X 44.5 cm)

Purchased with funds provided by the William Randolph

Hearst Foundation

47.8.30

THIS GRANDIOSE, GILDED TERRACOTTA
portrait of Pope Alexander VIII (1 61 0-1 691 ,
elected pope in 1 689) was commissioned
by his great-nephew, Cardinal Pietro
Ottoboni, a brilliant patron of the arts.
Domenico Guidi's artistry is displayed in the
commanding turn of the pope's head; in the vigorous modeling of the
details of the stole, which depict Saints Peter and Paul and the Ottoboni
coat of arms; and in the energetic verve of the fur-lined edge of the cape
{mozzetta), with its strong, syncopated curves and angles.

Guidi's talent has only recently become better recognized. He was long
overshadowed in art histon/ by the brilliance of Gianlorenzo Bernini, for
whom he can/ed marble, and Alessandro Algardi, for whom he cast
bronzes. Indeed, Guidi was one of the few sculptors in Rome who was
capable of casting his own compositions in bronze without recourse to a
foundry specialist.

Benedetto Luti (Italy, Rome, 1 666-1 724)

Head of an Apostle, 1712

Pastel on paper

161/8 x 13 in. (41 x 33 cm)

Gift of the 1 996 Collectors Committee
AC1996.29.1

106

BENEDETTO LUTI ABSORBED, while at the same time softened, the great
Roman classical tradition in painting as exemplified by artists from Raphael
to Carlo Maratta, Luti's immediate predecessor. He was also one of the
great colorists of his age, a skill he put to admirable use in the many pastel
and colored-chalk drawings for which he is justly famous.

The masterful Head of an Apostle is from a set of twelve pastel
drawings of the apostles. Which one of the twelve Luti intended is unclear
because he omitted the traditional attributes associated with each
(although, given the presence of an open book, it is certainly one of the
four evangelists: Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John). These portraits are thus
closer to character studies than they are to religious images. The museum's
drawing is the most vigorous and dramatic of the group, notable especially
for Luti's virtuoso handling of the chalks and for the extraordinary effect of
soft and shimmering tactility in the rendering of the apostle's beard.

Luti animated his subject by turning the apostle's head abruptly to the
right, as if suddenly called away from the book open before him. Deep in

thought, his faced bathed
in (divine?) light, the apostle
is granted a degree of
psychological and physical
intensity appropriate to the
Lord's representative.
The immediacy, fluency,
and grace of Luti's pastels
owe a debt to the
sixteenth-century master
Correggio, whose art
enjoyed a great revival in
the eighteenth century.

EUROPEAN ART -JO?

Jean-Antoine Watteau

(France, 1684-1721)
The Perfect Accord, 1719
Oil on panel
13x 11 in. (33x28 cm)

Gift of The Ahmanson Foundation
AC1999.18.1

JEAN-ANTOINE WATTEAU invented
and perfected the fete galante, a
genre of compositions showing full-
length figures, albeit in small scale,
engaged in activities — conversation,
music playing, promenading,
mem/making — that can best be
described as the pursuit of
happiness. The genre flourished
also in the works of his followers,
Nicolas Lancret and Jean-Baptiste Pater. Watteau never explained the
meaning of his compositions, which were given titles by others and are as
seductive as their interpretations remain mysterious. The Perfect Accord is
one such elusive masterpiece. An ugly old man plays a flute, accompany-
ing a young and beautiful singer, while a third figure, seen from the back
and garbed in a theatrical costume, plays the guitar. Behind them, a couple
walks by. A statue of Pan on the right contributes to setting the bucolic and
mildly erotic tone of the scene.

Watteau prepared his compositions with numerous drawings (a study
for the flute player is at the J. Paul Getty Museum) but did not attempt to
ensure his works a lasting life. He reused panels, scraping off or roughly
covering former compositions. This panel was originally part of a coach
door on which Watteau had painted its owner's coat of arms. It was later
returned to Watteau, who cut it in half and used one half to paint The Italian
Serenade, now in Stockholm, and the other to paint first a composition
with several figures (both the coat of arms and this composition are visible
in X rays) and finally T77e Perfect Accord.

108

The Great Lamentation

Originally modeled by Massimiliano Soldani-Benzi (Italy, Florence,

1656-1740), c. 1715

Made at the Ginori Porcelain Manufactory, Doccia, c. 1 745

Porcelain

26 1/2 X 25 X 23 V2 in. (67.3 x 63.5 x 59.7 cnn)

Purchased with funds provided by Neal Castleman and Ellen Hoffman-Castleman by exchange,
The Ahmanson Foundation, Antonio Mariani of Antonio's Antiques by exchange, Peter Norton,
Bob Looker, Frank Baxter, Camilla Chandler Frost, Eli Broad, Lynda Resnick, the Iris and B. Gerald
Cantor Foundation, Julian Ganz, Yvonne Lenart, Dan Belin in honor of Wally Weisnnan, Sandy Terner,
John Hotchkis, Judith Gaillard Jones, Chris Walker, Mrs. James Porter Fiske by exchange, and
Willard G. Clark
M.2001.78a-b

MASSIMILIANO SOLDANI-BENZI was one of the two greatest Florentine
Baroque sculptors. When he was only twenty-two years old, he was sent
by the Grand Duke Cosimo de'Medici to perfect his training in Rome and
Paris. Soldani-Benzi was head of the Florentine mint for forty years and
during that time designed a quantity of medals, decorative objects,
freestanding sculptures, and reliefs. The Great Lamentation (also called
Large Pieta to distinguish it from his less elaborate Pieta) was unparalleled
in his oeuvre for its complexity and size.

After Soldani-Benzi's death, his son sold his wax models to the
Marchese Carlo Ginori, who had established a porcelain manufactory in
1 737 at the town of Doccia, near Florence. Since the Renaissance, the
princely courts of Europe had tried to reproduce the fine porcelain of China
without true success until the manufactory at Meissen achieved its aims in
1710. The manufactory at Vienna soon followed; it was probably Vienna
that inspired Ginori to establish his. A true figure of the Enlightenment,
Ginori was appointed ambassador by the Tuscan senate when control of
Tuscany was transferred to the Habsburgs in Vienna. There he secured the
services of the porcelain painter Karl Anreiter von Zirnfeld, who returned
with him to Doccia.

Spectacularly colored in the vivid palette preferred by Anreiter, Ttie
Great Lannentation is a tour de force of porcelain sculpture. The Ginori
manufactory produced only three porcelain examples of this ambitious

EUROPEAN ART "109

composition. The others are in the Corsini collection (Florence) and the
Nationalmuseum (Stockholm). The museum's example, believed to be the
one painted by Anreiter and taken back with him to Vienna when his
contract with Ginori expired, was purchased from the Hispanic Society.

110

EUROPEAN ART

111

POLYCHROMED SCULPTURE

The museum's renowned collection of sculptures
that are painted, or polychromed, heightens the
visitor's senses to the interaction of form and
color. The museum's polychromed sculptures
range from the austere Deposition from the
Cross (circle of Daniel Mauch, c. 1515) to the
fanciful but dramatic Saint IVIichael Casting
Satan into l-iell (c. 1725), whose subject comes
from the Book of Revelation (12:7-10). The
archangel Michael battles the "dragon," Satan,
and casts him out of heaven. In the museum's
sculpture. Saint Michael's triumphant, delicate
beauty contrasts with Satan's ferocity. The
wonderful patterns and colors of Saint Michael's
wings and costume are enhanced by the ruby-
colored glass in his sandals and armor; both
figures have glass eyes.

The grand and gracefully proportioned
Archangel Raphael (c. 1 600), nearly six feet tall,
was once accompanied by a small figure of Tobias, lost before
the sculpture was purchased by the museum. The subject.

Circle of Domenico Antonio Vaccaro
(Italy, Naples, 1680-1750), Saint
Michael Casting Satan into i-lell,

c. 1725, polychromed wood with glass, therefore, has also been interpreted as the Guardian Angel

51 1/2x27 V4X 243/4 in. (130.8 X
69.2 X 62.9 cm), gift of The Ahmanson
Foundation, M.82.7

(Raphael's guise when he accompanies Tobias on his journeys).
Either interpretation lends support to its attribution to the
Neapolitan school because Raphael was one of the patron saints
of Naples. Much of the figure was polychromed in the painstaking
technique sgraffito [estofado in Spanish), in which most of the
sculpture was covered in gold leaf and then painted. The artist
incised the painted layer with a stylus, creating patterns in the
brilliant metal revealed underneath.

The cruciform designs in the archangel's armor are more
disciplined than those In the museum's Spanish sculptures of

112

Archangel Raphael (Italy, Naples,
c. 1600), polychromed and gilded
wood, h. 70 in. (177.8 cm), gift of
Anna Bing Arnold, M.77.52

Plata (Spain, Seville or Cordoba?,
c. 1725), polychromed plaster,
macerated linen fibers, gesso- or glue-
soaked fabric, wood, glass, and other
materials, 45V4 x 44I/2 x 33 in. (1 15 x
1 13 X 84 cm), purchased with funds
provided by Eugene V. Klein and Mary
Jones Gaston in memory of her
parents, Mr. and Mrs. Charles Stone
Jones, by exchange, M.2000.12

Saint Mark (attributed to Alonso Berruguete, c. 1560)
and the Pieta (unknown artist, c. 1725), in which the
patterns are more freely sketched. The Pieta is
especially remarkable because it was made almost
entirely of cloth — either in the form of macerated linen
fibers, rigidified yardage {tela encolada), or possibly a
real dress (for the Virgin Many), which was gilded and
then colored with a transparent red glaze. Mary's
head and hands are plaster, and her eyes are glass.

The lightness of cloth sculptures made them
especially popular for religious processions in Spain.
These sculptures were frequently commissioned by
penitential or charitable confraternities. Some were
given to churches, but others were discarded
because they were considered to be nothing more
than ephemeral decorations. This Pieta is the only
one of its kind in an American museum.

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113

Candlesticks with Apollo and Daphne

Designed by George Michael Moser (Switzerland, 1706-1783, active in

England)

Made in London, c. 1745

Gilt bronze

1 4 V4 X 7 X 7 in. (36.2 x 1 7.8 x 1 7.8 cm) each

Decorative Arts Council Fund in fionor of Sondra Ott
M.2001.20.1a-b,2a-b

THESE ROCOCO-SP/LE
candlesticks are among the earliest-
known examples of ormolu (gilt
bronze) made in England. First
developed in Paris during the late
seventeenth century, ormolu was
intended for lighting, furniture mounts,
and clocks in the luxury interior. In
England, however, the use of ormolu
was relatively unknown until the 1 760s
and then only among a small circle of
artists and patrons. The Rococo,
which originated in Paris during the
1720s, was characterized by delicate
sculptural forms of rock, shell, and
scrollwork, and a tendency toward asymmetry. George Michael Moser
probably mastered this latest fashion during his training in Geneva and
Paris. When he settled in London he worked as a chaser of gold
watchcases and snuffboxes in the Rococo style.

Moser's design shows the moment from Ovid's Metamorphoses when
Daphne transforms into a laurel tree to escape the amorous clutches of the
love-struck Apollo. The figure of Daphne is closely related to a design for a
candlestick by Gilles-Marie Oppenord (1672-1742) of the 1730s, but
Moser must have derived the Rococo scroll- and shellwork and twisting
asymmetrical forms from the engraved work of the goldsmith and architect
Juste-Aurele Meissonnier (1695-1750).

114

Frangois Boucher (France, 1703-1770)
Bacchus and Ariadne, 1 747-66
Tapestry-woven wool and silk
141 X 216 in. (358.1 x 548.6 cm)

Gift of J. Paul Getty
52.32

BACCHUS, THE GOD OF WINE, lias just arrived on the island of Naxos,
where he finds Ariadne, the daughter of the king of Crete, lying on the
shore. She is lamenting that her lover, Theseus, abandoned her while she
slept. In Frangois Boucher's depiction of the story, Bacchus is seen rushing
up to offer comfort to the stricken young woman.

Once part of a suite of tapestries depicting nine scenes from Loves of
the Gods, the museum's tapestn/ was woven at the Royal Beauvais
Manufactory, founded in 1664. In 1736 Boucher was invited to produce
drawings for tapestries; from then until his death in 1770, Beauvais
produced tapestries almost exclusively from drawings by the artist — a
collaboration that bolstered the fortunes of Beauvais and the success of
the Rococo interior.

The suite. Loves of the Gods, and this particular scene from it were
woven at Beauvais many times between 1 747 and 1 766 as both royal and

EUROPEAN ART

115

private commissions. Since all the royal commands of tlie series are
accounted for, the museum's tapestry must be from a private commission.
The master craftsmen of Beauvais admirably captured Boucher's famous
luminous flesh tones. Years of accumulated dirt, however, had almost
completely obscured this aspect of the tapestry. In 1996 Bacchus and
Ariadne was sent to England for consen/ation. There it was washed and
lined for support. The tapestry was renewed and Boucher's genius became
visible again.

i

^-s?^

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo

(Italy, Venice, 1696-1770)
A Fallen Angel, c. 1 752
Red and white chalk on
faded blue paper
IOV2X 12V4 in.

(26.7x31.1 cm)

Gift of the Graphic Arts Council
in honor of Ebria Feinblatt
M.84.21

A FALLEN ANGEL is a study
for one of the figures in
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo's

altarpiece of 1752, The Fall of the Rebel Angels, made for the chapel of
the Prince-Bishop's residence at Wurzburg, Germany, where the artist
and his studio (including his son Giovanni Domenico) created one of the
most splendid decorative ensembles in European art. Boldly modeled
and brilliantly lit, the figure's elongated torso (characteristic of Tiepolo's
approach to anatomy) is defined by the dramatic contrast of shadow
(expressed by the deftly applied red chalk) and light (suggested by a
few masterful strokes of white chalk). The blue of the paper, now
somewhat faded, is used as a halftone mediating between light and
dark, while the figure's contour is rendered with a form-defining line, both
agitated and nimble. A Fallen Angel exemplifies Tiepolo's draftsmanship
at its highest level.

116

Tiepolo used his drawings, hundreds of which survive, as essential aids
in the production of his oil paintings and especially for the dozens of
frescoes he executed in his native Venice, throughout northern Italy, and in
Germany. At the same time, many of his drawings were conceived
independently of painting projects. His work is renowned for its extreme
Rococo elegance, the brilliance and luminosity of its color, and its daring
and dazzling spatial effects.

John Deare (England, 1759/60-1798, active in Italy)

The Judgment of Jupiter, 1 786-c. 1 790

Marble

58 V4 X 1 1 7 V4 X approx. 1 0 in. (1 48 x 297.8 x 25.4 cm)

Gift of Anna Bing Arnold
M. 79.37

THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT Neoclassical relief in the United States,
carved by a virtuoso sculptor whose life ended in less than forty years.
John Deare was the youngest to win the Royal Academy's Gold Medal
(1780, in sculpture); in 1785 he was awarded a stipend to go to Rome.
There he immersed himself in the study of classical antiquities and
sharpened his skill as a draftsman. The Judgment of Jupiter was carved
in Rome. Deare died there, never returning to England.

EUROPEAN ART

117

The relief depicts an episode that lay at the origin of the Iliad. The
goddess of Discord was excluded from the wedding of Peleus and Thetis.
She threw a gold apple inscribed "to the fairest" among the guests,
sparking a competition among the goddesses Venus, Athena, and Diana
that ultimately led to the Trojan War. Here, Jupiter points to his messenger,
Mercury, who flies overhead; he will deliver the apple to a shepherd named
Paris, chosen by Jupiter to decide the contest in his stead.

The composition is set up in varying rhythms: the central section
shows Jupiter facing the competing goddesses, with Mercury flying
overhead; they are flanked on the left by Thetis and Peleus and on the right
by departing warriors. The marble is chiseled so that the relief varies from
near-freestanding figures to almost complete flatness, as though engraved
like an antique cameo. Several figures were directly inspired by ancient
Roman statues. In all, this masterpiece embodies the cold purity, beauty,
and perfection that are the quintessential characteristics of Neoclassical art.

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres

(France, 1 780-1 867)

Portrait of Thomas Church, 1816

Graphite on paper

715/^6 X 6 V4 in. (20.2 x 15.9 cm)

Purchased with funds provided by the Loula D. Lasker Bequest

and Museum Associates Acquisition Fund

M.67.62

THOMAS CHURCH (1758-1821) was a fifty-eight-
year-old English surgeon visiting Rome on the Grand
Tour when Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres drew his
portrait. The artist, who had been studying and
working in Rome since 1806, supported himself at the time by making
portrait drawings of foreign sitters. In Portrait of Thomas Church, Ingres
used a finely sharpened pencil to capture the sitter's face and personality,
while broader and more loosely applied strokes were used for the rest of
the figure. The contrast between the highly finished head and the more
impressionistically rendered torso is characteristic of the artist's style, and it

118

provides a tension between tine apparent spontaneity of a frozen moment
and the timelessness expressed by Church's impassive face.

The essence of art resided in draftsmanship, according to Ingres, who
worshiped Raphael and considered himself heir to the classical tradition.
The sureness of his touch, his free and sinuous yet exacting line (capable of
suggesting the sheen of silk or the roughness of wool), make his portrait
drawings among the most sublime expressions of the power of linear
definition. Portrait of Thomas Church was produced at the height of
Ingres's powers and is one of his finest and freshest character studies.
Ingres also drew a pendant portrait of Church's younger brother, Joseph,
now in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

Toilet Mirror

Designed by Philip Webb

(England, 1831-1915) and

(side and door panels) by

Edward Burne-Jones

(England, 1833-1898)

Made by Morris, Marshall, Faulkner

and Co., London, 1862

Walnut, gesso, paint, gilding, glass,

and brass

33x29x81/4 in.

(83.8 X 73.7 X 21 cm)

Purchased with funds provided by IVlr. and Mrs.
Russell McKinnon, William Randolph Hearst
Collection, Walter Stein, J. Paul Getty, Mr. and
Mrs. Danny Kaye, Anna Popper, Colonel and
Mrs. George J. Denis, Mr. and Mrs. Arthur
Hornblower, Jr., and Man/ B. Reagan Bequest
M. 2001. 19.1

THE BRITISH ARTS AND CRAFTS movement extolled handmade,
vernacular-inspired furnishings over industrial, classically derived ones. Of
all the movement's protagonists, William Morris (1 834-1 896) had the most

EUROPEAN ART

119

far-reaching influence. In 1861 he established the firm of Morris, Marshall,
Faulkner and Company to protest and provide an alternative to the
manufacture of "soulless" factory goods. (The firm was reorganized as
Morris and Company in 1875.) This toilet mirror is an early product of the
firm, whose goals included raising the status of the decorative arts to equal
that of fine arts and architecture. Among the firm's associates was the Pre-
Raphaelite painter Edward Burne-Jones, who designed the figures on the
mirror, and the architect Philip Webb, who conceived its form.

Webb designed this piece in the first year of the firm's existence for his
friend Warington Taylor, who became the company's business manager in
1865. Like other supporters of the Arts and Crafts movement, Taylor
embraced traditional English arts, which were considered purer and more
"moral" than imported styles. In accordance with these principles, Webb
designed the mirror in a startlingly simple form, influenced by English
vernacular furniture. And while the highly decorated figures would seem in
opposition to the form, they are not, since they are in the Gothic style
favored by early Arts and Crafts reformers.

Edgar Degas (France, 1834-1917)
Giovanna and Giuliana Bellelli, 1 865-66
Oil on canvas
36 V4 X 283/4 in. (92.1 x 73 cm)

Mr. and Mrs. George Gard De Sylva Collection
M. 46.3.3

THE SITTERS, GIOVANNA AND GIULIANA BELLELLI, were Degas's
cousins, the daughters of his aunt Laura Bellelli and her husband, Gennaro
Bellelli. Degas visited his relatives in Florence on several occasions, most
importantly in 1858 and 1859, at which time he conceived the large portrait
of the family now at the Musee d'Orsay, Paris. Numerous studies and
independent portraits relate to the large composition. Like the famous
Bellelli family portrait, the museum's portrait conveys the physical, and by
implication, psychological distance between the sitters.

It is possible that working in Paris on this double portrait of relatives in
Italy, Degas relied not only on sketches but also on photographs, as

120

suggested by a drawing for the composition in the Museum Boijmans Van
Beuningen, Rotterdam. In it, the careful delineation of the figures — so
different from Degas's spirited draftsmanship — may indeed betray the
painter's attention to a photographic model. If that was the case, the
daguerreotype would have been for Degas but an aide-memoire: His
painting eschews the stiffness and trite presentation of contemporary
studio photography.

The painting's degree of completion has also been the subject of some
speculation. Although it is often dated 1862-64, recent scholarship has
convincingly argued that its proper date is 1865-66. By then. Degas could
certainly have adopted a more cursive style, leaving areas of his com-
positions almost unfinished.

EUROPEAN ART

121

Adolph Menzel (Germany, 1815-1905)

Studies for "The Broken Jug" by Heinrich von Kleist, 1 876

Graphite on paper

93/4 X 147/3 in. (24.8 X 37.8 cm)

Gift of the 2001 Collectors Committee
M, 2001, 61.1

ADOLPH MENZEL WAS THE MOST PROMINENT artist in Germany from
the 1850s until his death in 1905 and ranks with Edgar Degas as one of
the greatest draftsmen of the nineteenth century. Painter, illustrator, teacher,
and tireless chronicler of life in Berlin, Menzel led the way both to Realism
and to Impressionism. His motto was "not a day without drawing," and he
followed his advice with unflagging diligence, producing more than ten
thousand drawings.

Studies for "Tine Brol<en Jug" is a preparatory drawing for one of
Menzel's engraved illustrations commissioned for an anniversary edition of
Heinrich von Kleist's comic play Ttie Brol<en Jug (1808). A landmark of
German Romantic theater, the play is set in an early-eighteenth-century
Dutch village where the central character. Judge Adam, finds himself
presiding over a case in which he is himself the culprit. In the opening
scene, Adam examines in a mirror the head wound he received the
previous night while attempting to seduce the village girl Eve. At the same
time he nurses his leg, injured while leaping from Eve's window. In the

122

upper right corner, Menzel inserted a masterfully rendered close-up view
of this leg.

With virtuoso control of his preferred drawing instrument — the
carpenter's pencil — the artist articulated the outlines of his figures with the
pencil's sharp point, while with its flat side he evoked the fall of fabric over
solid form through broad parallel strokes. An ambidextrous draftsman,
Menzel executed Studies for "The Broken Jug" with his left hand.

Paul Cezanne (France, 1839-1906)

Forest, c. 1 894

Oil on canvas

453/4x32 in. (11 6.2x81 .3 cm)

Wallis Foundation Fund in memory of Hal B. Wallis
AC1992. 161.1

EUROPEAN ART

123

FOREST IS AN EXUBERANT CANVAS in which Paul Cezanne abandons
his usual restraint, economy of nneans, and strict sense of composition
in favor of jubilant colors and improvisation. The red tones of the earth,
luminous patches of blue sky, and luxuriant vegetation indicate the painting
was executed in the artist's native Provence, which Cezanne evokes
with accuracy.

In this painting Cezanne develops a motif familiar in his work since the
1870s: the depiction of trees or thickets seen up close. Cezanne's dense
and powerful compositions acknowledge a debt to the late landscapes of
Courbet, and to Pissarro, in whose company Cezanne had worked earlier
in his career. In Forest, one of his most audacious compositions, Cezanne
takes even further the innovations of these painters by eliminating a human
presence or precise topography. The modernity and originality of such
compositions did not escape the attention of critics and artists, in particular
the younger artists associated with the Pont-Aven School, who recognized
the liberating force implied in the radicalism of Cezanne's paintings and saw
in them a model for their own aesthetic quest.

Auguste Rodin (France, 1840-1917)

Severed Head of Saint John the Baptist, c. 1 887-1 907

Marble

8x 153/4 X I3V2 in. (20.3 X 40 X 34.3 cm)

Museum purchase made possible by the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Foundation in
memory of B. Gerald Cantor
AC1 998. 139.1

THE GOSPEL OF ST MATTHEW (14:7-1 1) recounts Saint John the
Baptist's decapitation at the order of King Herod. This episode from the
New Testament became a preferred subject of the late-nineteenth-century
artistic movement Symbolism. To Rodin this sculpture represented the
Belgian nation's martyrdom in World War I. Rodin cherished Belgium
because he had spent some of the happiest years of his life there early in
his career. The sculpture was inscribed to the queen of Belgium as a
personal gift in 1916, and Rodin had it consigned to the care of the

124

American dancer LoTe Fuller, one of his greatest promoters. Because of the
chaotic conditions of the war and Rodin's death in 1917, the sculpture was
not delivered to its rightful owner until 1926. The queen's son Leopold III
inherited and eventually sold it.

Rodin's original model of this head was created for the lintel of his
gigantic relief The Gates of Hell, commissioned in 1880. Rodin frequently
readapted existing compositions, often endowing them with a new sub-
ject or context and executing them in different media. In this example,
marks produced by various types of chisels are easy to discern. The
rough character of the carving is typical of Rodin's preference for
Michelangelo's technique, which left subsidiary elements of marble
sculptures apparently unfinished.

EUROPEAN ART

125

Vincent van Gogh (Holland, 1853-1890, active in France)
The Postman Joseph Roulin, 1888
Brown ink over black chalk on paper
2OV4X 16% in. (51 .4x42.2 cm)

The George Gard De Sylva Collection
M.49.17.1

THIS U\RGE SHEET IS ONE OF THREE drawings and six paintings made
by Vincent van Gogh in 1888 and 1889 of Joseph Roulin (1841-1903), a
postal official in Aries and close companion of the artist. Van Gogh
attempted to capture a sense of the character and personality of Roulin in
addition to imparting a faithful interpretation of his external physical
features. The postman's pride in his position is evidenced by the gold-
trimmed uniform in which he poses and apparently wore day and night.
Van Gogh called Roulin "a man more interesting than most" and came to
love him dearly. It was Roulin, in fact, who brought the artist home after he
cut off his ear.

In this extraordinary portrait, a replica (with some differences) of van
Gogh's painting in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the sitter's eyes are
bright and his gaze even. Rendered in the artist's characteristic brown ink
applied with reed pen, Roulin's snub-nosed face is drawn with light, rapid,
vertical strokes, while the deep blue of his uniform is suggested by darker,
more aggressively applied horizontal hatching. The portrait has an almost
crude directness as well as an immediacy and poignancy that are hallmarks
of van Gogh's highly personal style.

126

EUROPEAN ART

127

LATIN AMERICAN ART

130

Man-Jaguar

Mexico, Olmec, Gulf Coast, Tabasco, c. 1000-600 b.c.
Serpentine with traces of cinnabar
H. 4V4in. (10.8 cm)

Gift of Constance McCormick Fearing
M. 86.311. 6

OLMEC CIVILIZATION FLOURISHED in the Gulf Coast region between
1200 and 400 b.c and formed the philosophical, political, and artistic
foundations of later Mesoamerican civilizations. Olmec sculpture, colossal
in scale or exquisitely carved in jade and other precious greenstones,
conveys a great monumentality. This diminutive figure powerfully portrays
both the human and jaguarian features of a religious specialist or divine
ruler undergoing transformation into a supernatural state. Transformation
of humans into their animal companions was a means of engaging the
ancestors and manipulating cosmic forces. The figure does not wear a
mask but actually is, beneath his human form, a jaguar: the skin and hair
on the head have been removed to expose his feline nature. The
supernatural qualities of the sculpture were originally enhanced by glowing
eyes inlaid with pyrite.

Jaguars have long inspired awe in the Americas and commonly
symbolize the powers of kingship and authority. Though jaguars live in
caves, they are equally at home on land and in water, and this ability to
move between two realms led to their association with the act of
transformation. Religious specialists and divine kings alike moved between
earthly and supernatural worlds by means of meditation and the use of
hallucinogens, and their actions were commemorated in effigy figures such
as this one.

U\TIN AMERICAN ART 1 31

standing Male Figure

Mexico, Maya, Campeche, Jaina, 600-800
Ceramic with white and blue pigment
H. 9^/8 in. (25.1 cm)

Gift of Phil Berg
M. 71. 73. 217

THIS HAND-MODELED FIGURE once formed part
of a burial offering on the island of Jaina, located off
the northwest coast of the Yucatan Peninsula.
Graves on Jaina from the Late Classic period
(600-900) usually contained one of these figures,
which was placed on the chest or in the arms of
the deceased.

While some Jaina figures appear to represent
well-known deities, such as Ix Chel, the goddess of
weaving, others may have reflected the occupations
of the deceased, including warriors and ballplayers.
Many figures also functioned as rattles, flutes, or
whistles. Jaina figures were generally constructed as
hollow or solid tubes of clay. The limbs and head
were attached, the joints smoothed over, and the figure was then dressed
with thin slabs of clay shaped as clothing. Pellets of clay were applied to
create facial features and textile designs, then they were cut and shaped to
fit the individual character.

This figure wears an embroidered hip cloth and turbanlike headdress.
His raised right hand may have once held an object, while his left hand
expresses the ancient Maya gesture of deference or respect. The figure's
sloping forehead reveals his noble status. Traces of "Maya blue," a
distinctive pigment central to the Maya palette, appear on his headdress.

132

Wall Relief

Guatemala/Mexico, Maya, Usumacinta Valley region,
possibly La Pasadita, 750-850
Limestone with remnants of red pigment
27 1/2 X 34 V4 in. (69.9 x 87 cm)

Purchased with funds provided by Joan Palevsky and the Shinji Shumeikai Ancient Art Funds
AC1 992.76.1

MONUMENTAL SCULPTURE OF THE CLASSIC PERIOD (250-900) portrays
the kings and queens of the Maya and records their dynastic histories and
courtly activities by means of an elaborate hieroglyphic writing system. This
wall relief appears to be from La Pasadita, a hilltop site on the northern side
of the Usumacinta River that was part of the political hierarchy of the
dominant center of Yaxchilan.

Perhaps once situated in a royal palace, the relief depicts an elegantly
dressed Maya noblewoman. She wears a long garment, or huipil, with
embroidered edges. Her jewelry includes a jade bead necklace with a disk
pectoral, wide beaded bracelets, and jade bead ear ornaments. The
woman's headdress comprises the upper jaw of a serpent topped by a
human mask and elegantly overlapping feathers of the quetzal bird. She sits
cross-legged within a cartouche that represents the Mayan hieroglyph for the
moon. The text panels indicate that one of her names or titles is the same

^ ^ , __-^-,- --^7^ moon glyph. Partially

L\s,'?sir^

/i

c/

1^ \

nit Ik

'^'A

eroded, the text records
the woman as a deity
impersonator, perhaps
partaking in a ceremony.
Bundles, such as the one
she carries, often held
effigies of the gods or
ritual paraphernalia.

%

^l^i^

I^TIN AMERICAN ART

133

Labret in the Form of an Eagle Head

Mexico, Mixteca-Puebia, 1200-1500

Gold

3/4 X 1 V4 in. (1 .9 X 3.2 cm)

Gift of Constance McCormick Fearing
AC1992.134.29

THIS U\BRET, OR LIP ORNAMENT,
represents the fine artistry in gold work of
the Late Postclassic period (1200-1500).
Little of this work survives because the Spanish conquistadors melted down
and cast into bars the many gold objects found in the treasury of the Aztec
emperor Moctezuma.

Although gold working originated in the Andean region as early as
1200 B.C., metalworking did not appear in Mexico until the tenth century a.d.
Smiths, who most often obtained gold by panning streams and riverbeds,
frequently cast gold using the cire-perdue (lost-wax) method. They formed an|
exact beeswax model and encased it in a clay and powdered charcoal mold.
The mold was heated and the wax melted out through a pouring channel.
Molten metal was then poured into the mold to fill the cavity left by the wax.
The mold itself was destroyed before the cast could be removed. For Aztecs
and Mixtecs, the eagle not only symbolized the sun but also represented a
military order dedicated to the sun. In the founding mythology of their capital,
the Aztecs located Tenochtitlan on an island where an eagle perched on a
cactus holds a serpent in its mouth, a symbol that endures today on the
Mexican flag.

134

Mixteca-Puebia Style Vessel

Mexico, Nayarit, 1350-1500
Ceramic with pigment
H. 13% in. (34 cm)

Purchased with funds provided by Camilla Chandler Frost
M.2000.86

THIS VESSEL IS FROM THE AMAPA-PENITAS region of Nayarit in
northwestern Mexico. The complex, elaborately painted scene resembles
those found in codices of the Late Postclassic period (1200-1500). The
dense conglomerate of thirty figures wraps around the entire surface of the
vessel, including the bottom. A distinct scene involving six figures is
featured around the vessel's neck.

The Mixteca-PuebIa style is not associated with a single ancient city
but rather with the many small city-states comprising a diverse array of
ethnic groups. Mixteca-PuebIa art, generally small in scale, is found in wall
paintings and codices as well as in precious objects of turquoise mosaic,
gold, and featherwork. The Mixtecs of Oaxaca specialized in the painting of

books and related forms of
painting on pottery. Some books
described the family histories of
the many dynasties throughout
the region. Others contained
religious accounts describing the
actions of the pantheon of gods
associated with the ritual calendar.
Reflecting the content and style of
these books, this vessel portrays
humans and supernatural figures
engaged in ritual and historic
action, perhaps associated with
the founding of a dynasty.

LATIN AMERICAN ART

135

CERAMIC TRADITIONS OF ANCIENT WEST MEXICO

Around two thousand years ago, in the region now occupied by
the modern West Mexican states of Nayarit, Jalisco, and Colima,
powerful chieftains began building ceremonial centers. Their
construction of elaborate subterranean shaft-and-chamber tombs
was unique among ancient Mexican civilizations. The shaft-tomb

Kneeling Female Figure, Mexico,
Nayarit, 200 b.c.-a.d. 300, ceramic
with slip, 24 X 15 X 12 in, (61 x 38.1 x
30.5 cm). The Proctor Stafford
Collection, museum purchase with
funds provided by Mr and Mrs.
Allan 0. Balch, M. 86. 296.1

Seated Male Figure, Mexico, Jalisco,
200 B.C.-A.D, 300, ceramic with
burnished cream slip, 17 x 14 x 13 in.
(43.2 X 35.6 x 33 cm), The Proctor
Stafford Cdllection, museum purchase
with funds provided by Mr. and Mrs.
Allan 0. Balch, M.86.296.85

cultures reached the height of their development between
200 B.C. and a.d. 500. The geographic distribution of tombs
forms a rough arc through the lake and river basins of this
mountainous volcanic region.

A variety of burial offerings were placed in these tombs,
including large, hollow ceramic figures; models of buildings and
festival scenes; vessels in the form of animals and plants; and
smaller objects such as stone implements, shell trumpets, and
obsidian mirrors. Figural sculptures commemorated various life

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events such as marriage and earlier rites of passage into
adulthood. These occasions were marked by feasting, and the
foods of the feast, both plant and animal, were also richly
depicted in the art of West Mexico.

Scholars originally regarded the ceramic tomb sculptures as
secular in meaning and anecdotal in content.
More recently, however, the profound
symbolic significance of the objects has
become apparent through comparison with
contemporary central Mexican polities, with
which they were linked by trade.

U\CMA's important collection of West
Mexican ceramics was purchased from
Proctor Stafford in 1 986.

I

Standing Warrior, Mexico, Jalisco, El
Arenal Brown style, 100 B.C.-A.D. 300,
ceramic with red, yellow, vi/hite, and
black slip, 37 X 15 in. (94 x 38.1 cm),
The Proctor Stafford Collection,
museum purchase with funds provided
by Mr and Mrs. Allan C. Balch,
M.86.296.86

LATIN AMERICAN ART

137

Man's Tunic

Peru, South Coast, Wari Culture, 600-850
Camelid fiber and cotton in tapestry weave
40x391/2 in. (101.6x 100.3 cm)

Purchased with funds provided by Camilla Chandler Frost and Robert and Mary Looker through the
2000 Collectors Committee
M, 2000.59

TEXTILES WERE THE MOST IMPORTANT connnnodity in the ancient
Andean world. They played a part in tribute and taxation as well as religious
and political ceremonies, including those pertaining to birth, marriage, and
death. This region appears to have lacked a written language, but it is
believed that much information was encoded in the design and imagery on
woven or embroidered cloth. Many of these textiles survive today because
they were wrapped in mummy bundles and buried, resting untouched for
centuries in the dry, sandy tombs of Peru's coastal desert.

138

This tunic was worn by a male cleric or high governtnent official of the
Wari — people from the high Andes who created an empire that encom-
passed most of present-day Peru. Garments made in the labor-intensive
tapestry weave demanded an extraordinary amount of material and human
resources. The complexity of patterns, colors, and images suggests that
Wari weavers were allowed wide latitude in their choice of designs.

The hallmark of Wari textile design is a focused abstraction of
geometric motifs and stylized imagery that forms an iconographic "code,"
usually based on variations of a winged attendant figure holding a staff in
profile. Incorporating a range of composite forms of humans, felines, raptor
birds, and serpents, these complex abstractions may have symbolized the
early Andean concept of a universe composed of complementary
opposites and the interdependence among its human, animal, and
supernatural spheres.

Chalice

Made in Mexico City, 1 575-78
Silver gilt, rock crystal, boxwood,
and feathers
H. 13 in. (33 cm)

William Randolpti Hearst Collection
48.24.20

THIS CHALICE IS A FUSION of Spanish
silver work and native Mexican craft
tradition. It is conceived in the form of the
massive architectural pieces of Spanish
silver of the late Renaissance. The base
of the bowl, the hexagonal knop, and the
spreading lobed foot are densely chased
in the conventional European manner with
scenes and figures from the life of Christ.
Instead of the traditional colored enamels,
native featherwork has been employed as

LATIN AMERICAN ART

139

a background to the boxwood carvings in the hexagonal knop and the
glazed compartments in the foot. Featherwork, a tradition that originated
in pre-Hispanic times, continued into the colonial period and was put to
new uses in religious art. The natural iridescence of the feathers greatly
attracted the attention of Europeans and made the objects highly valued.
The chalice also features rock cn/stal, a mineral that ancient Mexican artists
had carved for centunes before the Europeans arrived in the New World in
the fifteenth century.

Cope from a Set of Vestments

Mexico, 1700-1750
Polychrome silk, metallic silver,
and gold embroidery on linen
Cb. 53 X 112 1/2 in.
(134.6x285.8 cm)

Costume Council Fund
M.85.96.7

DURING THE CELEBRATION
of the Catholic Mass, clergy
members wear traditional ecclesiastical garments specific to ritual hierarchy
and function. Originally based on Roman costume, the style of this cere-
monial vestment was made into a uniform liturgical code of dress in the
twelfth century that has remained consistent to the present day Exquisitely
embroidered sets of vestments lavishly worked with silver and gold were
made in New Spain by nuns skilled in needlework or by embroiderers'
guilds, which included members of the indigenous population who had
been taught embroidery in schools run by priests. Nuns and professional
embroiderers took commissions from Spanish and Creole (Spaniards born
in New Spain) aristocrats for court clothing as well as for religious objects.

The exuberant color and pattern of this cope (a cloak worn by the
priest as a processional garment) are characteristic 'of the eclecticism in the
arts of Mexico during the eighteenth century. The indigenous style was
influenced by new patterns from Europe and China, including the

140

embroidered silks and tapestries brought by trade ships from the
Philippines. The preference for intensely decorated surfaces and strong
pattern had characterized native Mexican art well before the arrival of the
Europeans, and a similar preference for the bold and elaborate was also
evident in Spanish Baroque art. The confluence of characteristic motifs —
brilliant peonies from Asia, pomegranates from Spain, and symbols of the
sun and moon from Mexico — produced a richly colorful, stimulating
amalgam of fascinating forms and patterns in the textiles of the period.

Carlos Merida (Mexico, born Guatemala, 1891-1984)

Structural Study for a Mural, 1 921

Oil on canvas

283/4 X 323/4 in. (73 x 83.2 cm)

The Bernard and Edith Lewin Collection of Mexican Art
AS1997.LWN.323

IJ\TIN AMERICAN ART

141

ALTHOUGH CARLOS MERIDA was bom in Guatemala, he spent most of
his career in Mexico. Like many of his contemporaries, Merida traveled to
Paris, where he remained from 1912 to 1914. There he met a number of
avant-garde artists, including Pablo Picasso and Amedeo Modigliani, and
was in contact with Mexican artists such as Diego Rivera.

Upon his return to Guatemala in 1914, Merida studied the country's art
traditions and folklore, which he believed could serve as the basis of a
higher art, one equal to that of Europe. In 1919 he moved to Mexico City,
where he exhibited paintings of Indians composed in a deliberate flat style
and in bright colors that recall Guatemalan textiles. Structural Study for a
Mural, one of Merida's earliest and most accomplished works, demonstrates
his interest in representing subjects indigenous to the Americas. The swirling
floral design in the background balances the strong geometric forms of the
figures and echoes that of the handcrafted bowl in the foreground. These
motifs reflect Merida's interest in local folk traditions, which were undergoing
a reevaluation in Mexico in the early 1 920s.

Diego Rivera (Mexico, 1886-1957)

Flower Day, 1 925

Oil on canvas

58 X 47 1/2 in. (147.3 x 120.7 cm)

Los Angeles County Fund
25.7.1

IN HIS VAST PUBLIC MURALS painted in Mexico and the United States
from the early 1920s through the early 1950s, Diego Rivera created a new
iconography that expounded socialist ideals and exalted the popular
heritage of Mexican culture. He also produced a large body of easel
paintings and graphic work. During his formative years in Spain and France
from 1907 to 1921 , Rivera experimented with Impressionist, Symbolist, and
Cubist styles. Upon his 1921 return to Mexico City, where he launched his
muralist career, he began intensively studying and collecting the country's
Pre-Columbian and folk art.

Flower Day is Rivera's earliest depiction of a calla lily seller and one of
his most important works representing the indigenous population of Mexico.

142

It is related in subject and style to his 1923 murals in the Court of Festivals
at the Ministry of Public Education in IVIexico City. The unusual perspective
of the flowers, which are seen from above, and the blocklike forms of the
figures are stylistic devices derived from Rivera's earlier Cubist paintings.
The work's hieratic style also recalls Pre-Columbian sculptures. The
success of Flower Day might have contributed to the ensuing popularity
of the subject, of which Rivera created more than two dozen versions.

LATIN AMERICAN ART

143

MEXICAN MODERNISM

Generally, Mexican modernism is associated with the muralists
Diego Rivera, Jose Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros,
known as "Los Tres Grandes." They emerged at a time when the
visual arts assumed an important political role in Mexico. After the
Mexican Revolution (1910-20), art increasingly reflected a spirit of
national pride and progress.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, many Mexican
artists, Rivera and Siqueiros among them, traveled to Europe and
became acquainted with the most avant-
garde trends, including Cubism. Upon their
return to Mexico, they sought to create a
universal visual language that would also
communicate a sense of national pride. They
did so by drawing on stylistic elements that
they considered Mexican and by selecting
subjects that reflected the country's social
reality Folk art became a potent national
symbol. Adolfo Best-Maugard and Maria
Izquierdo, for example, based many of their
compositions on the folk art traditions of
Mexico, while Rivera portrayed indigenous
types in many of his murals and easel
paintings of the 1 920s and later.
Although Rivera, Orozco, and Siqueiros are often seen as a
group and are considered the prime representatives of the

oil on canvas, 452/4 x 35 in. (1 16.2 x

88.9 cm), gift of Morton D. May, 53.25.1 Mexican School, their approaches were radically different.

Perhaps the most outspoken of Los Tres Grandes, Siqueiros was
wary of equating Mexican art with the picturesque and the
folkloric. He opted instead for experimenting with new techniques
(he is credited with inventing the drip technique later adopted by

Diego Rivera (Mexico, 1886-1957),
Still Life with Bread and Fruit, 1917,

1^

144

David Alfaro Siqueiros (Mexico,
1896-1974), Landscape in Red, 1969,
acrylic on board, 26 x 40 in. (66 x
101 .6 cm), The Bernard and Editli
Lewin Collection of Mexican Art,
AS1997.LWN.431

Jackson Pollock) and with
introducing new ways of
representing space.

During the 1920s and
1930s, a nunnber of artists
reacted against the
propagandistic monumentality
of the nnuralists and
demonstrated greater affinities
with other forms of vanguard
visual expression. The Esthdentista movement, for example,
promoted the concept of an urban Utopia not unlike that of the
Italian Futurists. Los Contemporaneos disseminated the ideas of
the European avant-garde and promoted artists such as Rufino
Tamayo, who drew on Mexican culture but whose approach
avoided the grandiloquence of the muralists. Many other artists,
such as Frida Kahio, who were not part of the Mexican School or
affiliated with any group that countered it, contributed to the
plural artistic discourses of Mexico. The influx of refugees from
the Spanish Civil War and World War II further enriched the art
scene in Mexico during the first half of the twentieth century.

In 1997 Bernard and Edith Lewin
donated to U\CMA a collection of more
than two thousand works, mostly by
Mexican masters.

Frida KahIo (Mexico, 1907-1954),
Weeping Coconuts, 1951 , oil on
canvas, gVgX 12 in. (23.2 x
30.5 cm), promised gift of Bernard
and Edith Lewin, AS1997.LWN.615

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U\TIN AMERICAN ART

145

Rufino Tamayo (Mexico, 1899-1991)

Messengers in the Wind, 1931

Oil on canvas

31 X 34 in. (78.7 x 86.4 cnn)

The Bernard and Edith Lewin Collection of Mexican Art
AS1997.LWN.36

BORN IN OAXAGA, RUFINO TAMAYO briefly attended the National School
of Fine Arts in Mexico City and first traveled to New York in 1926. When he
returned to Mexico in 1 928, he grew increasingly interested in Mexican folk
art and themes of everyday urban life. Folk art and Pre-Columbian art were
important for Tamayo; he considered them to be true expressions of
Mexican culture.

Unlike many Mexican contemporaries whose often politically charged
work portrayed the native population in stereotypical ways, Tamayo
advocated a universal art in which the act of painting would be valued over
subject matter He believed that art should have a primarily aesthetic rather
than ideological function. Although the human figure is integral to his work,
color and texture are equally significant.

In IVIessengers in tine Wind, two native women dressed in white fly
across an urban nocturnal sky. Their flight evokes works by the Italian
Futurists; their speed is reinforced by the trajectory of the electrical wires.
During the 1920s and 1930s, a number of artists in Mexico depicted the
technology of the city to emphasize its modernity. This work conflates
many of Tamayo 's chief concerns — local subjects, urban life, and
incongruous situations, which particularly reflects his interest in Surrealism.

146

U\TIN AMERICAN ART

147

148

Joaquin Torres-Garcia (Uruguay, 1874-1949, active in Spain, France,

and the United States)

Construction with Wliite Line, 1938

Tempera on board

33 V2 X 21 Vg in. (85.1 x 53.7 cnn)

Gift of the 2002 Collectors Committee and purchased with funds provided by Alice and Nahum Lainer

M. 2002.55

BORN IN URUGUAY, JOAQUiN TORRES-GARCIA settled with his family in
1891 in Barcelona, where he became part of the Gatalonian avant-garde. In
1 926 he moved to Paris, befriended the Dutch artists Piet Mondrian and
Theo van Doesberg, and quickly became associated with an international
group of abstract artists.

By 1930 Torres-Garcia began to formulate his own artistic theory,
integrating symbols into his abstract compositions. He sought to create
what he called a Universal Constructivist art, fusing pure abstraction with
recognizable symbols that would prompt various associations. Like many
contemporary European avant-garde artists, Torres-Garcia became
fascinated by so-called primitive art, and in 1 929 he began incorporating
patterns found on Pre-Columbian objects and images of ancient masks
into his works.

Construction witli Wliite Line embodies the artist's desire to combine
geometric abstraction with Indo-American motifs. Rendered in earth colors
typical of Andean ceramics and textiles, the painting includes symbols
recurrent in Torres-Garcia 's work: the universal man, the fish (a symbol of
life), the pyramid (a symbol of reason), and the Pre-Columbian mask.

L7\TIN AMERICAN ART 1 49

Matta [Roberto Sebastian

Matta Echaurren] (Chile,

1911-2002, active in

France, Mexico, and tlie

United States)

Untitled, 1940

Crayon, pencil, and collage

on paper

22 x28 in. (55.9x71.1 cnn)

Gift of Mrs. Lillian Alpers
AC1 997.44.1

ROBERTO SEBASTIAN MATTA ECHAURREN (known as Matta) is the
quintessential peripatetic artist. Born and raised in Chile, his career evolved
in Paris, New York, and Mexico, among many other places. He started out
in the early 1 930s as an architect, working for two years with Le Corbusier
in Paris. By 1937 his association with the Surrealists (including Salvador
Dali and Andre Breton) had led him to abandon architecture and devote
himself to painting. During his years in New York (1938-48), Matta served
as a bridge between American and European avant-garde artists and has
been credited with aiding the development of Abstract Expressionism.

Space is Matta's main subject. His work of the 1940s is characterized
by webs of lines that give his compositions an atmospheric depth. Known
as "inscapes" or "psychological morphologies," the seemingly ever-
changing forms are visual analogies for the artist's psyche. In this work, a
number of amorphous human bodies appear close to exploding into the
scene. Eroticism and danger are equated: The figures copulate and
dance — possibly a sly reference to Henri Matisse's Joy of Life (1905-6) —
and hold knives, which sen/e as both phallic symbols and tools of violence.
Although this kind of uncanny juxtaposition is characteristic of many
Surrealist works of the period, Matta's are unique in their conception of an
all-encompassing, intangible space, which is as much a representation of
the mind as it is of the cosmos.

150

Sebastiao Salgado (Brazil, born 1944)
Untitled, 1988, printed 1990
Gelatin-silver print
16x20 in. (40.6 X 50.8 cm)

Ralph M. Parsons Fund
M.91.78.1

SEBASTIAO SALGADO'S DEEP INTEREST in the human condition led
him to begin studying law in 1963. Soon, however, he decided to switch
careers and turned to economics; he received a doctorate in agricultural
economy from the Sorbonne in 1971 . By 1973 Salgado had changed
careers once again, becoming a freelance photojournalist documenting
the drought in the Sahel region of Africa. Later he joined several picture
agencies, including the Paris-based Sygma in 1974, Gamma in 1975, and
Magnum, the prestigious cooperative agency founded by Henri Cartier-
Bresson, in 1978.

One of Salgado's most ambitious projects was his series on workers
and the decline of manual labor as a result of the industrial age. The series
was completed in 1992 and published as Workers: An Archaeology of the

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LATIN AMERICAN ART

151

Industrial Age (1993). The work comprises close to four hundred photo-
graphs taken all over the world, including Brazil, Cuba, China, India,
Rwanda, and the United States. Among the strongest images are those
taken in Serra Pelade in Brazil. This photograph shows numerous men
climbing in and out of a gold mine carrying sacks both empty and full. The
almost infinite trail of human bodies is dwarfed by the omnipotence of the
landscape and contributes to the dramatic effect of the image.

Enrique Chagoya (United States, born Mexico, 1953)
Uprising of the Spirit, 1 994
Acrylic and oil on paper
48x72 in. (121.9 x 182.9 cm)

Gift of Ann and Aaron Nisenson in Memory of Micliael Nisenson
AC1995. 183.9

152

BORN IN MEXICO, ENRIQUE CHAGOYA moved to the United States in
1977 and has since straddled both cultures. He brings together traditional
icons from Mexico and the United States — Pre-Columbian deities, Disney
characters, comic book heroes — to create images laden with new,
provocative, and often political meanings.

Uprising of tine Spirit is characteristic of Chagoya's interest in the
dialogue and tensions between high and popular culture. Here, two cultural
icons — Superman and NezahualcoyotI, the Aztec king of Texcoco — are
positioned for combat. Superman's weapon is his X-ray vision, while
NezahualcoyotI is armed with a traditional Aztec shield and club. Chagoya
depicts Superman flying out of a scene derived from Theodore de Bry's
illustrated book /\/77er/ca (1590). De Bry's engravings documented the
atrocities of the Spanish conquest. Thus Chagoya is equating American
imperialism with Spain's massacre of the native population of the Americas.
NezahualcoyotI also emerges from an illustrated text, the famous sixteenth-
century codex Ixtiiixociiiti. A collector's stamp adds to the feeling of
authenticity. Chagoya's battle is not exclusively among cultural icons or
oppressors and the oppressed, but among the texts that construct history.

Cildo Meireles (Brazil, born 1948)
Webs of Freedom, 1976/98
Iron and glass
59 Vg X 59 Vg in. (1 50.2 x 1 50.2 cm)

Purchased with funds provided by Cecilia Wong, Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, Carlos and Rosa de la
Cruz, and the Modern and Contemporary Art Council
ACI 999. 13. 1.1 -8

CILDO MEIRELES'S WORK EXPLORES art-making systems and issues of
perception and philosophy, and at the same time it reflects the political
realities of contemporary Brazil. No piece exemplifies this remarkable mix
better than Webs of Freedom. This work results from a systematic
methodology: It is constructed from the repeated use of the same linear
element. In theory, this work could not only extend indefinitely across a
single plane, but it could also continue to grow volumetrically.

UXTIN AMERICAN ART -j 53

J

154

In 1976 Meireles made the first version of Webs of Freedom from
fisliing nets. In 1977 he fabricated it in metal. The museum's version
(realized in 1998) is a foot larger in both dimensions than the 1977 piece
and is constructed of tubular rather than flat iron. Separate elements (not
shown in the illustration) that hang on the wall behind the metal grid
represent its alphabet or building blocks. At first glance, the work seems
ordered. However, the spiky angularity of the coarse iron grid, with a
rectangular sheet of glass trapped within its structure, has more disturbing
emotional and social connotations. The title is paradoxical, since webs
suggest entrapment rather than liberty. Webs of Freedom, conceived at the
height of Brazil's twenty-year dictatorship, is both an indictment of that
regime and a statement about the nature of existence.

LATIN AMERICAN ART 1 55

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AMERICAN ART

158

John Singleton Copley (United States, 1738-1815)

Portrait of a Lady, 1771

Oil on canvas

497/3x391/2 in. (126.7 X 100.3 cm)

Purchased with funds provided by the American Art Council, Anna Bing Arnold,
F. Patrick Burns Bequest, Mr and Mrs. William Preston Harrison Collection,
David M. Koetser, the Art Museum Council, Jo Ann and Julian Ganz, Jr,
The Ahmanson Foundation, Ray Stark, and other donors
85.2

JOHN SINGLETON COPLEY, THE LEADING portrait painter in the colonies
in the decade before the Revolution, lavished his skill on the character and
status of his sitters. The identity of the woman in this portrait is lost, but
Copley gives us much information about her. Her relaxed posture and the
quiet placement of her right hand over her left wrist are casual, but her
eyes and face remain resen/ed and dignified. The dress she wears, while
informal, is luxurious, and although the setting is private, for family and
friends, even here she does not relax too much.

Copley was equally interested in describing the rich material surfaces
that surrounded his subject. A rare piece of furniture in American homes of
this period, the sofa, with its rich brocaded damask upholstery, competes
for attention with the sitter. Americans might be plainspoken but they
nonetheless liked displaying their wealth in expensive fabrics and highly
polished furniture. Copley balances this extraordinary luxun/ with the quiet,
almost severe expression on his sitter's face. She may live amid much
comfort, but she is not taken in by it.

AMERICAN ART 159

Armchair

Attributed to Thomas Affleck

(United States, born Scotland, 1740-1795)

Made in Philadelphia, 1765-75

Mahogany and white oak

403/4 X 29% X 29 1/2 in. (103.5 x 75.6 x 74.9 cm)

Gift of Alice Braunfeld
M. 2001. 75.1

THIS CHAIR IS FROM A SET owned by John Penn,
the last proprietary governor of Pennsylvania. It is
attributed to Thomas Affleck, one of the best
Philadelphia cabinetmakers and the only one known
to have owned a copy of The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director
(1 754) by Thomas Chippendale, the greatest designer of English
Rococo-style furniture.

The armchair was based on a "French Chair," plate 19 in the 1762
edition of the Director. The word Frencii refers to the chair's straight legs,
which were exceptional in the colonies in 1770, when most fashionable
furniture had the cabriole (curved) legs that characterize American
Chippendale furniture. The style of the chair, coupled with the outstanding
quality of its carving and the ample expanse of upholstery (often the most
expensive material in the household), demonstrates that it was intended to
make a persuasive statement about the owner's wealth and social standing.

China Table

Attributed to Robert Harrold

Made in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, 1765-75

Mahogany, pine, and maple

28 V4 x 36 V2 X 231/8 in. (71 .8 x 92.7 x 58.7 cm)

Gift of Alice Braunfeld
M. 2001, 75. 2

160

"CHINA" OR "SILVER" TABLES, as they were called in
period accounts, were specifically designed for serving
tea, a center of social activity in a wealthy eighteenth-
century household. Such tables attested to the social
standing of their owners, since their presence
indicated a knowledge of the latest customs from
England and the leisure time to practice them.
Considered one of a family's most prized possessions,
these tables were always fully set with silver and china
and displayed in what was deemed the "best parlour."

Stylistically, this table is an unusual interpretation of the English Rococo
(or Chippendale) in America. With its dramatically arched saltire (crossed)
stretchers, the table is one of only seven known, all from Portsmouth, New
Hampshire. It is characteristically English in style (only the use of maple as a
secondary wood and the provenance of such tables reveal their American
origin); its likely history is that an immigrant English cabinetmaker introduced
the pattern to Portsmouth, thus demonstrating the cultural and stylistic
orientation toward the mother country of the town's most affluent residents.

Tambour Desk

John Seymour (United States, 1 738-1 81 9) and
Thomas Seymour (United States, 1771-1848)
Made in Boston, 1794-1804
Mahogany with inlays of satinwood and pine
48 V4 X 39 X 19 in. (122.6 x 99 x 48.3 cm)

Gift of Alice Braunfeld
M. 2001 .75.3

THIS DESK IS ONE OF THREE made by the
leading Boston cabinetmakers John and Thomas
Seymour to survive with its original pedimented top.
The tambour doors, made from narrow strips of
veneer glued to canvas, can be rolled back to

AMERICAN ART 161

reveal storage compartments. When closed, the delicate swags of
bellflowers, painstakingly inlaid into each small strip, reflect the shapes of
both the pediment and the drawer-front veneers.

Not surprisingly, since the Seymours had emigrated from London, the
desk resembles a "Lady's Cabinet and Writing Table" illustrated in English
design books of the late eighteenth century. It also reflects greater
educational opportunities for women, since these lighter, 'more delicate
forms were specifically developed for their use.

William Wetmore Story (United States,
1819-1895, active in Italy)
Cleopatra, modeled 1858, can/ed 1860
Marble

H. 55 in. (139.7 cm)

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Henry M, Bateman
78.3

WILLIAM WETMORE STORY, an expatriate
sculptor in the Anglo American colony in
Rome, was assured his international
reputation when this sculpture was sent
by Pope Pius IX to the 1862 International
Exposition in London. Like her historical
counterpart, Cleopatra is both Greek and
African. The sculpture gained its fame for its
* Neoclassical perfection and for its allusion
" -^- - to the fight for African American freedom.

Story's best and most romantic works were large-scale seated figures of
notable ancient heroines that focus on a psychological drama. In this early
work, Cleopatra contemplates suicide after the loss of her Roman lover.
Her despair and nen/ous tension are conveyed through a brooding facial
expression, downcast head, slumped body, and agitated fingers. Nathaniel
Hawthorne, who immortalized Cleopatra in The Marble Faun (1860), wrote:
"He drew away the cloth. . . . The sitting figure of a woman was seen. . . .

162

Cleopatra — fierce, voluptuous, passionate, tender, wicked, terrible, and full
of poisonous and rapturous enchantment — was kneaded into what, only a
week or two before, had been a lump of wet clay."

Thomas Moran (United States, born England, 1837-1926)

Hot Springs of the Yellowstone, 1 872

Oil on canvas

I6V4X3O in. (41.3x76.2 cm)

Gift of Beverly and Herbert M. Gelfand
M.84.198

THOMAS MORAN, A PHIUXDELPHIA U\NDSCAPE painter and illustrator,
played a critical role in the formation of the first national park, Yellowstone.
Moran visited the area with the earliest official government scientific survey
in the summer of 1871 . Working closely with photographer William H.
Jackson, Moran studied Yellowstone's amazing landscapes and returned
east to work his impressions into finished paintings. These efforts culmi-
nated in a monumental canvas. The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone,

AMERICAN ART

163

which was bought by Congress, as well as legislation saving Yellowstone
fronn development.

In the same year, Moran painted a tew other oils, including this view ot
the Mammoth Hot Springs, looking south toward Bunsen Peak. While The
Grand Canyon celebrated Yellowstone's gigantic scale, this small painting
was the first to focus on Yellowstone's most unusual feature, the hot
springs. Moran was clearly impressed by the alchemy of mineralization that
deposited a rainbow of colors in the stone. This work exhibits a hallmark of
American landscape painting, the transformation of the wilderness
experience into an emblematic work of art.

164

Winslow Homer (United States, 1836-1910)

The Cotton Pickers, 1876

Oil on canvas

24x381/8 in. (61 x 96.8 cnn)

Acquisition made possible tlirougti Museum Trustees: Robert O. Anderson, R. Stanton Avery,
B. Gerald Cantor, Edward W. Carter, Justin Dart, Cliarles E. Ducommun, Camilla Chandler Frost,
Julian Ganz, Jr., Dr. Armand Hammer, Harry Lenart, Dr Franklin D. Murphy, Joan Palevsky,
Richard E. Sherwood, Maynard J. Toll, and Hal B. Wallis
M.77.68

WINSLOW HOMER WAS A SUBTLE CHRONICLER of African American life
in the years immediately following the Civil War. During the 1 870s he visited
Virginia for a firsthand look at the work of Reconstruction, returning to
scenes he had known as a war correspondent. The pictures that resulted
from these trips analyzed the various successes, failures, and tragedies of
the war and its aftermath. The most monumental of these studies is
The Cotton Pickers.

The Cotton Pickers was painted in 1876, the nation's centennial year,
when the state of the Union was much on the minds of Americans. During
this period. Homer concentrated on representing his fellow Americans and
their ways of life. Yet unlike most other commentators on American society,
Homer included African Americans in this citizenry. These women are the
first successful expression of the theme that would dominate Homer's
figurative paintings in the last part of his career, the imagery of strong
women who dominate the landscapes they toil in. The figures are seen
from below, a perspective that raises them heroically above a sea of
cotton. The almost infinite expanse of the field alludes to the enormity of
their labor; their stoic beauty suggests the strength of their resistance
to their condition.

AMERICAN ART

165

Mary Cassatt (United States, 1844-1926, active in France)

Mother About to Wash Her Sleepy Child, 1 880

Oil on canvas

39 1/2 X 25^/8 in. (100.3 x 65.7 cnn)

Mrs. Fred Hathaway Bixby Bequest
M. 62. 8. 14

MARY CASSATT WAS THE ONLY AMERICAN ARTIST to participate in the
independent exhibitions organized by the Impressionists. Mother About to
Wash Her Sleepy Child was shown in their sixth exhibition, the third to
which Cassatt contributed. The painting is also the first of her depictions of
mothers and children, the theme that became her most important
contribution to the development of Impressionism, and one which
constituted almost a third of her oeuvre.

Like the other Impressionists, Cassatt concentrated on painting
contemporary life. Unlike her male counterparts, however, she was severely
limited in the range of public subjects she could witness and portray. At the
same time, as an early feminist artist, Cassatt upheld the special and
positive character of women and women's domestic roles, turning a
potential liability into a strength. In Mother About to Wash Her Sleepy Child,
a mother reaches for a washcloth as she tenderly cradles the child on her
lap; the child turns a sleep-flushed face up to her mother. The heart of the
painting is the look that passes between them. Even though the subject is
traditional, Cassatt's loose brushstroke and flat patterning transform it in a
completely modern way.

166

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167

168

John Singer Sargent (United States, born Italy, 1856-1925, active in

England, France, and Italy)

Portrait of Mrs. Edward L. Davis and i-ier Son, Livingston Davis, 1890

Oil on canvas

861/8 X 48 V4 in. (218.8 x 122.6 cnn)

Frances and Armand Hammer Purchase Fund
M.69.18

ALTHOUGH JOHN SINGER SARGENT became the most successful
portrait painter in the English-speaking world in his lifetime, he had a great
deal of difficulty during the 1880s reconciling his desire to be stylistically
up-to-date while still satisfying his sometimes conservative sitters and
critics. This portrait was painted at the beginning of his American career,
and it expresses perfectly the nature of his final triumph, his ability to stop
just at the brink of being too daring, producing a painting that is both
formally sophisticated as well as suitably flattering. This portrait was
frequently exhibited and helped consolidate Sargent's fortunes.

Mrs. Edward Davis was the wife of the former mayor of Worcester,
Massachusetts, and the portrait was painted at her home. Sargent posed
Mrs. Davis on the threshold of her carriage house so that the background
is cast entirely into darkness while she and her son are fully illuminated.
The artist's technique and use of light allude to the Spanish seventeenth-
centun/ artist Diego Velazquez, as do the bolerolike jacket worn by Mrs.
Davis and the sharp contrast between her black dress and her son's white
summer costume. These allusions, however, are subsumed by the artful
naturalness of the embrace of mother and son.

AMERICAN ART 169

Winslow Homer (United States, 1836-1910)
After the Hunt, 1 892

Watercolor, gouache, and graphite on paper
14x20 in. (35.6 X 50.8 cm)

Paul Rodman Mabury Collection
39.12,11

WINSLOW HOMER'S WATERGOLORS are remarkable for their expressive
and inventive technique and for their dramatic subjects. In 1884 Homer
permanently settled in Prout's Neck, Maine, but often spent late summer
and early fall at a camp in the Adirondacks, New York, where he hunted
and fished. After the Hunt shows the aftermath of a successful hunt. The
deer has been driven into the water by hounds and drowned. Two guides
haul a dog back into the boat; the body of the deer, already retrieved, lies
behind them.

Homer depicted this subject from many different points of view and at
many different moments in the drama. His deer-hunting watercolors
represent his most sustained effort to record and imagine a single activity,

170

and they are among his most important accomplishments. The subject is
a brutal one, but Homer's astonishingly sophisticated technical control and
simple composition force us to appreciate it as an aesthetic object. This
paradox is the source of Homer's greatest power as an artist.

Henry Ossawa Tanner (United States, 1859-1937, active in France)
Daniel in tiie Lions' Den, 1907-18
Oil on paper mounted on canvas
41 Vg X 497/8 in. (104.5 x 126.7 cm)

Mr. and Mrs. William Preston Harrison Collection
22.6.3

ACTIVE IN FRANCE AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY, Henry Ossawa
Tanner specialized in religious painting, and Daniel in the Lions' Den is one
of his most admired works. According to the Old Testament story, Daniel,
the Jewish prophet thrown into a lions' den by the Babylonian king Darius

AMERICAN ART

171

for refusing to give up liis faitii (Dan. 6:16-24), remained calm, assured by
Inis beliefs, and emerged from the den the next day unhurt. The theme of
unjust persecution and imprisonment appealed to Tanner, whose mother
and father, a bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, were social
and political activists.

The first version of this painting, shown at the Paris Salon of 1896,
was more realistic, drawing on Tanner's academic training in Philadelphia
and Paris as well as his visit to Palestine to study biblical culture. Reflecting
his increasingly Symbolist approach, this version is less a literal narrative
than an evocation of Daniel's experience, with Tanner conveying the
prophet's tranquillity and spirituality through light and color. The blue-green
palette with flecks of purple was a color scheme popular with Symbolist
painters, who strove for quiet, meditative effects.

T*.*^

^

^^^

172

Writing Table from the Henry G. Marquand Residence, New York City

Designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany (United States, 1848-1933)
Made by Tiffany and Company, New Yorl<, c. 1885
Satinwood, brass, pewter, and original leather
25% X 36 X 243/g in. (65.1 x 91 .4 x 61 .9 cm)

Gift of the 1995 Collectors Committee
AC1 995.46.1

IN 1881 HENRY GURDON MARQUAND, art patron and second president
of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, commissioned Richard Morris Hunt to
build a mansion at 68th Street and Madison Avenue in Manhattan.
Marquand hired the period's most prominent designers to create the
interior, which included a Moorish "smoking room" designed by John La
Farge and Louis Comfort Tiffany. Moorish rooms were de rigueur in 1880s
New York, but those that imitated ornament from the Alhambra (the
fourteenth-centun/ king's palace in Granada, Spain) exemplified the most
elaborate phase of this style. The overmantel of the room was based on
the Alhambra's Myrtle Court decoration, and the whole ensemble, filled with
Hispano-Moresque lusterware and Islamic glass, was described in The
Decorator and Furnisher (1 888) as a "wondrously beautiful example a la
Alhambra." This desk was designed as the smoking room's centerpiece,
and Tiffany's fascination with Islamic architecture and design is evident in
the desk's eight-sided shape, the molded arches of its base, the delicately
carved spindled panels, and the arabesque inlays of various metals.

AMERICAN ART I73

Quilt, Log Cabin Pattern, Pineapple Variation

Pennsylvania, 1870-80
Pieced wool and cotton
88 X 88 in. (223.5 x 223.5 cm)

Gift of the Betty Horton Collection
M.86.134.18

A PART OF AMERICAN CULTURE from the early years of settlement and
western expansion, quilting was first a utilitarian act. As a cooperative task,
it gave women in small communities a respite from their frequently solitary
labors. Following an earlier period of reliance on European fabric and
fashion, nineteenth-century American quiltmakers began to demonstrate a
creative self-confidence paralleling the spirit of the times.

The Log Cabin square was an extremely versatile quilt-building unit. A
center square of fabric was firmly sewn to a foundation block of cotton or
muslin. Succeeding strips or "logs" of fabric were then sewn around it in
an interlocking manner, setting up a lively visual counterpoint. In the
octagonal blocks of the Pineapple variation, brightly colored angular
pineapple shapes vibrate against a dark and intensely patterned ground,
creating a dramatic sense of movement and depth. Other names of the
Log Cabin's variant patterns reveal metaphors of their origins: Court House
Steps, Barn Raising, Running Furrow, Streak of Lightning, and Windmill
Blades. The museum's quilt is an enduring monument to the remarkable
visual sense of the unknown artist who created it.

174

AMERICAN ART

175

John Frederick Peto

(United States, 1854-1907)
HSP's Rack Picture, c. 1900
Oil on canvas
4OV4X3O in. (102.2x76.2 cm)

Purchased with funds generously provided
by Cecile Bartman
AC1 998. 140.1

A MASTER OF TROMPE L'OEIL
(painting that "deceives the eye"
through the illusionistic delineation of
highly detailed narrative objects),
still-life painter John Frederick Peto
focused on inexpensive everyday
things — envelopes, ledgers,
newspaper clippings — their banality
echoing his own modest lifestyle.
Often he presented these items
under strips of cloth, imitating the office "rack" (the predecessor of today's
bulletin board). This, the largest of his "rack pictures," is dedicated to his
daughter Helen Serrill Peto (HSP). His signature and her initials appear to
be cut into the wooden backboard. Despite such illusionism and allusions
to his life, Peto's late canvases reflect the artist's move away from realism
toward modernism. Peto emphasized the composition's flatness through
his choice of objects, then transformed these storytelling items into simple
geometric forms (for example, he omits the addresses on envelopes so
that they become simple colored rectangles). Design rather than allegon/
reigns supreme in his late rack paintings.

176

Table Lamp from the Susan Lawrence Dana House,
Springfield, Illinois

Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright (United States, 1867-1959)
Made by Linden Glass Company, Chicago, 1903-4
Glass, bronze, and zinc

Base: 2OV2 x 12 x SVg in. (52.1 x 30.5 x 22.5 cm);
shade: diam. 29 in. (73.7 cm)

Gift of Max Palevsky
M.2000.180.44a-b

THE PRAIRIE-STYLE BUILDINGS Frank Lloyd Wright completed in the first
decade of the twentieth century redefined the concept of domestic space.
Wright aimed for complete design unity — the total work of art created when
building, furnishings, and setting form an environmental whole. Accordingly,
the Dana commission included furniture, textiles, and light fixtures, as well
as the house itself and its landscaping.

Wright called this philosophy organic design, insisting that a building
must "associate with the ground and become natural to its prairie site."
The overhanging eaves of the house are inspired by the low horizon of the
prairie, as is the shade on the lamp — its pitch is similar to that of the
house's roof. The Dana commission is linked by geometry and color as
well as closeness to the earth. Wright considered geometric shapes the

"grammar" of architecture and
design, which is acknowledged in
the lamp by the zinc caning that
holds the glass together. The
glass, in earthy tones of amber,
moss green, terracotta, and
creamy white, mimics the colors
of the prairie, which are echoed
throughout the house.

AMERICAN ART

177

ARTS AND CRAFTS

From left to right

Vase, designed by Frederick Hurten
Rhead (England, 1880-1942, active
United States), made by University City
Pottery, University City, Missouri, 1911,
earthenv\/are, 17V4 x SVg in. (43.8 x
13 cm), gift of Max Palevsky,
M. 91. 375.44

Vase, thrown by Joseph Fortune Meyer
(France, 1848-1931, active United
States), decorated by Mazie Teresa
Ryan (United States, 1880-1946),
made by Newcomb College Pottery,
New Orleans, 1 906, earthenware,
127/g X SVg in. (32.7 x 20.6 cm), gift
of Max Palevsky M.91 .375.31

Vase, made by Marblehead Pottery,
Marblehead, Massachusetts,
c. 1910-20, earthenware, 13V4 x
7V2 in. (33.7 X 19.1 cm), gift of Max
Palevsky M.91 .375.27

The Arts and Crafts movement was more than an artistic style; it
was a worldview that added design to the social reform agenda
of the 1 880s and 1 890s. Its proponents believed that the
industrial process had stripped the craftsperson of his or her
individuality, and they vowed to change society by changing the
very nature of work. They passionately believed that handmade
objects produced from natural materials were morally superior to
those made by machine, and that well-crafted objects had the
power to improve the lives of the people who made them and
those who used them.

Although the movement started in Great Britain, the most
industrialized country in the world, it quickly spread to the United
States. Max Palevsky's donation of more than three hundred
objects enables LACMA to interpret the complex narrative of the
American movement more comprehensively than with any other
public collection. These objects demonstrate how Arts and Crafts

178

Living Room Armchair from tiie
Robert R. Blaclor t-louse, Pasadena,
Califomia, designed by Henry Mather
Greene (United States, 1 870-1 954)
and Charles Sumner Greene (United
States, 1868-1957), made by
Peter Hall Manufacturing Company
Pasadena, 1907, mahogany ebony
oak, and (replaced) upholstery, 33% x
24V4x2l5/8in. (84.8 X 62.2 X
54.9 cm), gift of Max Palevsky
M. 89. 151 .4

practitioners favored solutions that iiad developed as a response
to climate and geography. Made of local materials and reflecting
vernacular traditions, architecture and furnishings were planned
to fit into the landscape. The goal was design unity — a total work
of art in which the building, its contents, and its setting formed an
environmental whole. In furniture, straight lines replaced ornate
curves, solid native woods took the place of imported veneers,
and unnecessary decoration was rejected. The hope, never fully
realized, was that these "simplifications" would reduce the cost of
the products, making them accessible to a wide public.

The ceramics industry was one of the first to respond to the
new demand for more individual, handmade objects. The
illustrated pieces of art pottery share the movement's aesthetics
and values: simplicity inspiration from nature (rather than from
styles of the past), integration of decoration and form, and
individuality — all three were thrown on a wheel, and then hand

painted or incised. The chair from Greene
and Greene's Blacker House exemplifies
the Arts and Crafts movement's response
to the local landscape (in this case
Southern California), as well as the ideal
of total integration, since the architects
also designed all the furniture and lighting
fixtures for the house.

AMERICAN ART

179

George Bellows (United States, 1882-1925)

Cliff Dwellers, 1913

Oil on canvas

40V8X42 in. (101.9x 106.7 cm)

Los Angeles County Fund
16.4

GEORGE BELLOWS WAS A MEMBER of the Ash Can School, a group
associated with the artist and teacher Robert Henri who painted the working-
class slunns of New York's Lower East Side, its "ash cans," as one critic said.
Cliff Dwellers is Bellows 's most complete urban street scene. Deftly conveying
the storefronts and tenement stoops. Bellows focuses on the neighborhood's
mothers and children, the domestic side of downtown life. The figures are
almost caricatured by the few strokes Bellows has used to depict them, but
the energy with which they are drawn holds the eye. Bellows made a related
drawing under the title Why Don't They Go to the Country for a Vacation?,
ironically calling attention not only to the poverty of the people but also to
their humanity.

At the same time, a very complex formal order underlies the painting.
Both the compositional structure and the color harmonies are self-consciously
developed along the lines of the theorist Hardesty Maratta. This conceptual
rigor, typical of Bellows and fully deployed here to manage the many figures
and details in the composition, is one of the strengths of his painting.

180

AMERICAN ART

181

Alfred Stieglitz (United States, 1864-1946)

Music Equivalent, 1 922

Gelatin-silver print

7 x9V2 in. (17.8x24.1 cnn)

Purchased with funds provided by Camilla Chandler Frost, Sheila and Wally Weisman, Robert F,
Maguire III, the Grinstein Family, Alice and Nahum Lainer, and Dorothy and Paul Toeppen through the
1998 Collectors Committee, and the Ralph M. Parsons Fund
AC1 998.1 26.1

182

ALFRED STIEGLITZ IS CUSTOMARILY REGARDED as the single most
influential American photograplier of the twentieth century. It may be said
that his presence — as artist, publisher, and gallery director — not only
assured photography of its modern position within the visual arts, but also
went far in promoting modern art within the United States at the beginning
of the century. By the early 1920s, Stieglitz felt that he had stretched the
limits of his art, and he contemplated how the fundamentally materialistic
vision of the camera could address abstract seeing. To that end, he began
work on what many feel is his greatest contribution to photographic
history — the Equivalents, a series of evocative images of clouds and sky In
an article published in 1923, Stieglitz outlined how he came to the subject:
"I wanted to photograph clouds to find out what I had learned in forty years
about photography Through clouds to put down my philosophy of life — to
show that my photographs were not due to subject matter — not to special
trees, or faces, or interiors, to special privileges, clouds were there for
even/one. ... I wanted a series of photographs which when seen by
Ernest Bloch [the composer] he would exclaim: 'Music! Music! Man, why
that is music.'"

Music Equivalent of 1 922 is from the initial set of ten images Stieglitz
made that involved this radical notion. Later he photographed only cloud
forms, with no indication of the landscapes below; here, he still situates the
clouds above the earth, producing a spectacular visual poem to their
majestic orchestration.

AMERICAN ART 183

Anne Brigman (United States, 1869-1950)
The Soul of the Blasted Pine, 1 908
Gelatin-silver print
7% X 95/8 in. (19.4 x 24.4 cm)

Ralph M. Parsons Fund
M. 2001 .8

ANNE BRIGMAN, an influential and idiosyncratic Pictorialist photographer
working in Northern California, was channpioned by Alfred Stieglitz.
Brigman became the only California member of Stieglitz's Photo-Secession
in 1906 and of the British Linked Ring Society in 1909. Both groups were
dedicated to furthering the understanding of photography as art. Her
position as both a Pictorialist and as a member of the Stieglitz group is
indicative of the times in which traditional ideas of the uses of photography
as art and a rising modernist aesthetic were often at odds.

The dominant theme in the majority of her romantic and soft-focus
imagery was the human figure in the landscape. Often posing nude within
a meditative or expressive California landscape of weathered pines,
precipitous cliffs, and limitless ocean, Brigman created images that reflect
a bohemian lifestyle and a rising interest in transcendentalism. This use of
tableaux and self-portraiture links her to Julia Margaret Cameron and her
contemporary F. Holland Day. It also foreshadows the more conceptual
pictorial investigations that arose toward the end of the twentieth century

in work by artists such
as Claude Cahun and
Cindy Sherman.

184

Stanton Macdonald-Wright

(United States, 1890-1973)
Synchromy in Purple,
late 191 8 or early 1919
Oil on canvas
36x28 in. (91.4x71.1 cm)

Los Angeles County Fund
60.51

THE PIONEERING MODERNIST
Stanton Macdonald-Wright
cofounded Synchromism with
Morgan Russell in Europe in
1913. Desiring to achieve
harmony and balance through the
systematic but abstract use of
color, the artist developed a color
scale not unlike a musical scale;
synchromy means "with color,"
just as symphony means "with music." With the outbreak of World War I,
Macdonald-Wright returned to the United States, first living in New York
City before settling in Southern California (the place of his childhood) in late
1918. In Los Angeles he was destined to spearhead the emerging
modernist movement of the region.

This seated, muscular male nude is constructed as a series of fractured
planes. Macdonald-Wright identified the dominant hue as purple, which in
his color scale was actually red-violet. The major color chord is the red-
violet, yellow-orange, and green that can be seen as a triad in the face. The
artist equated each color with a different emotion, and according to his
treatise on color, published in 1924, red-violet was "strong, rich in
potentialities." Historians have suggested that the theme of Synchromy in
Purple is creation. Painted soon after Macdonald-Wright's return home, it
signifies the artist's belief that California held the future for modern art.

AMERICAN ART

185

Edward Weston (United States, 1886-1958)

Nude, 1925

Gelatin-silver print

6V4X8V2 in. (15.9x21.6 cm)

Anonymous gift
46.23.14

EDWARD WESTON BEGAN HIS CAREER as a photographer in Tropico
(now Glendale), California. His work until the early 1920s showed a distinct
Pictorialist sensibility that lent itself to romantic subjects, theatrical lighting.

186

s^

and painterly effects. Responding to a rising modernist aesthetic and a
pivotal meeting with Alfred Stieglitz in 1922, Weston doggedly undertook
the straightfoHA/ard and unretouched photography of natural objects and
scenes for which he became internationally known. For Weston, making
photographs was not merely the creation of factual records or formally
attractive compositions, but the communication of the essence of the
object or scene before the camera, which he described as "the greater
mystery of things revealed more clearly than the eyes see."

Weston's photographs of isolated and anthropomorphized peppers and
shells; his lyric abstractions of rock, kelp, and tide pools along the Carmel

coast; and his intricately balanced patterning
captured in the undulations of the Oceano sand
dunes are among his more renowned series. His
intermittent nude studies extended his master/ of
photography's potential to reveal through balance,
precision, and a perceptive sensitivity the intricate
abstraction inherent in natural forms.

AMERICAN ART

187

Imogen Cunningham

(United States, 1883-1976)
Aloe Bud, c. 1 929
Gelatin-silver print
14 X IO^/q in. (35.6 X 27.6 cm)

Los Angeles County Fund
30.45.7

IMOGEN CUNNINGHAM first worked as an
assistant to the studio and ettinographic
photographer Edward Sheriff Curtis. After
studying in Gernnany and starting her own studio
in Seattle in 1910, she eventually moved to the
San Francisco Bay area, where she became a
dominant figure in the thriving photographic
community that included Ansel Adams and Edward Weston. While
Cunningham is perhaps best known for her beautiful and insightful
portraiture, some of her most resonant images eschew the familiarity of
faces and expression altogether. One of her early masterworks is this
obliquely lighted and dramatically shadowed study of a lone aloe bud. Like
other photographs of vegetables and flowers that she made about the
same time, the image forefronts the bud's sensual form.

Aloe Bud is an early representative image of an important international
movement in twentieth-century photography away from the romantic and
painterly images of the Pictorialist aesthetic toward a more precise and
straightforward celebration of the camera's potential. In 1932 Cunningham,
along with several other California photographers — including Adams,
Weston, Willard Van Dyke, and Consuelo Kanaga — formed Group f/64.
Declaring their work to be "pure photography," they emphasized clean,
crisp line and detail and exhibited a new freedom from painterly
conventions for their aesthetic definition. Although the group held only one
exhibition in 1935, their work had far-reaching effects, greatly influencing
succeeding generations of photographers.

188

Georgia O'Keeffe (United States, 1887-1986)

Horse's Skull with Pink Rose, 1931

Oil on canvas

40x30 in. (101.6x76.2 cm)

Gift of the Georgia O'Keeffe Foundation
A01994. 159.1

GEORGIA O'KEEFFE WAS BASED on the East Coast until late in her
career. While vacationing in the Southwest in 1929, however, she fell in love
with the region, and after the death of her husband, Alfred Stieglitz, in
1946, she settled there permanently. O'Keeffe was fascinated by the desert
ecology: the aridness of the land, the parched quality of its natural life, and
the scorching sun. In 1931 she began combining found skulls and shank
bones with artificial flowers and painting the simple arrangements as a
"new way of trying to define [her] feeling about that country." These works
received favorable attention when they were first exhibited in 1932 at

Stieglitz's gallen/ An American Place. From
these early bone images she went on to
Mf^\ ^. develop her most iconic desert paintings, in

401 . ^K which she set a single skull against a

panoramic mountain-range backdrop.

Horse's Skull with Pink Rose is a transitional
work. The inclusion of a rose and the use of a
rich, dark shade of blue refer back to the large
floral paintings O'Keeffe had created a few
years earlier in hues of orange, red, and other
vivid colors. This work retains the intense
coloration of the flower paintings rather than
the more restricted palette of earth tones
characteristic of her later desert scenes. The
skull, symbol of the desert, has been isolated
from its normal environment in the same manner that the flowers had been
removed from their garden. Only later when O'Keeffe returned the skull to
its natural environment did she also utilize a palette of blacks, browns, and
beiges that underscore the elemental character of the region.

AMERICAN ART

189

CALIFORNIA ART: IMPRESSIONISM TO MODERNISM

Granville Redmond (United States,
1871-1935), California Poppy Field,
c. 1926, oil on canvas, 40 1/4 x 60 ■'74 in.
(102.2 X 153 cm), gift of Raymond
Griffith, 40.7

Millard Sheets (United States,
1907-1989), Angel's Flight, 1931 , oil
on canvas, 50 V2 x 40% in. (128.3 x
102.6 cm), gift of Mrs. L. M. Maitland,
32.17

For American Impressionist painters, California was a land wholly
natural, drenched in light and joyfully colorful. They seldom
approached grandeur in their paintings and instead preferred the
comforts of the azure coast or the hush of the
golden desert, as Southern Californians still
do. The hectic pace of development around
Los Angeles made every new arrival more
acutely aware of the beauties of the land,
preserved in canvases by Granville Redmond,
William Wendt, and others.

While local arts organizations were
dominated by the Impressionists, the love of nature was not
limited to them, and even at the height of their dominance, other
visions thrived. Modernism still stands as the most convenient
term for these styles and ideas, and Southern California quickly
developed its own variety. Stanton Macdonald-Wright was the
critical figure, encouraging an interest in different
techniques and decorative effects. The influence of
Diego Rivera and other Mexican muralists was also
palpable. Realists like Millard Sheets reflected the dual
interest in decorative elements and socially responsive
art, capturing a California peopled by workers and the
leisure class alike. Working in the Bay Area, Sargent
Johnson in particular dedicated himself to depicting
African American culture.

For such a small and tightly knit scene, the level of
experimentation was surprisingly high and fluid.
Connected to international movements, Californians
were distant physically from Europe and New York but were
unintimidated by that distance; they knew that they lived in the
leading image factory in the world. Many of the artists were as

190

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^

. ^

■

Sargent Johnson (United States, 1887-1967),
Chester, 1930, painted terracotta, 11 V2 x
4I/2 X 43/4 in. (29.2 X 1 1 .4 X 12 cm), gift of
Mrs. William J. Robertson in memory of her
father Adolph Loewi, AC1997.71.1

daring with materials and techniques as they were
with imager/. Knud IVlerrild especially, with his
assemblages and Flux paintings, was as vivid and
innovative as any artist working in the United
States in the 1930s. Without much support, but
also without much opposition from well-
established art institutions (for there were none),
the younger artists of Southern California and their
teachers practiced a wide variety of styles, laying
the groundwork for the art scene that flourished in
the region after the war.

Knud Merrild (Denmark,
1894-1954, active United
states). Provocative and
Natural Form Organization,
1933, oil on plaster and wood,
24 X 16V4in. (61 x 41.2 cm),
gift of Mrs. Knud Merrild,
M.77. 136.2

Lorser Feitelson (United States, 1898-1978),
Life Begins, 1936, oil and collage on
Masonite, 22 Vg x 26^2 in. (57.2 x 67.3 cm),
purchased with funds provided by Mrs. W. H.
Russell by exchange, the Blanche and
George Jones Fund, and the Modern and
Contemporary Art Council, with the
cooperation of the Lorser Feitelson and Helen
Lundeberg Feitelson Arts Foundation and
Tobey C. Moss Gallery, ACI 996. 103.1

AMERICAN ART

191

f*\

MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ART

194

Mikhail Larionov (Russia, 1881-1964)

Dancing Soldiers, 1909-10

Oil on canvas

345/g X 403/^6 in- (87.9 x 102.2 cnn)

Purchased with funds provided by Mr. and Mrs. William Preston Harrison Collection, Mr. and Mrs.
John C. Best, and Friends of the Museum, Charles Feldman, and Mr. and Mrs. Paul Kantor
80.3

MIKHAIL UXRIONOV PU\YED A PIVOTAL ROLE in advancing the most
revolutionary artistic thinking in Russia. He and his companion, the artist
Natalia Goncharova, spearheaded what they termed a Neoprimitive style.
They urged fellow Russian artists not simply to imitate Western European
modernism but to find inspiration in unique, indigenous folk art practices.
By including pictorial distortions and crudely lettered graffiti in Dancing
Soldiers, Larionov borrowed from the Russian tradition of the peasant
lubok (popular woodblock illustration).

Dancing Soldiers, based on Larionov's own experience of military
service, portrays a raucous scene of soldiers at leisure. Two men
engaged in a card game curse at each other, while a third drunkenly
plays the accordion and sings a bawdy tune. By deliberately flattening
the pictorial surtace, Larionov makes the soldiers appear to float in an
amorphous red space, heightening the scene's fanciful quality The
painting was shown in the 1910 exhibition in Moscow organized by the
avant-garde Jack of Diamonds group, of which Larionov and
Goncharova were founding members.

MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ART 1 95

Natalia Goncharova (Russia, 1881-1962)

Ballet Costume for a Young Woman from "The Golden Cockerel," 1914

(1 937 reconstruction by the artist of lost original)

Linen, cotton, and appliqued braid

Headdress circumference 22 in. (55.9 cm); scarf cb. 22 in. (55.9 cm);

blouse cb. I8V4 in. (46.4 cm)

Purchased with funds provided by the Costume Council Fund
M.68.51.8a-d

THE BALLET THE GOLDEN COCKEREL, with music by Nicolai Rimsky-
Korsakov, choreography by Michel Fokine, and costumes and sets by
Natalia Goncharova, made its debut in Paris during the 1914 season of the
Ballets Russes, The company's producer and charismatic director, Sergei

Diaghilev, initiated a dramatic change in the
concept of ballet when he introduced the
troupe in Paris in 1909. He saw ballet as a
complete work of art — integrating music,
choreography that expressed the emotion of
the music, sets designed to elucidate the
story, and costumes. The highly original and
sometimes controversial ballets were a
collaboration of the day's leading composers,
dancers, painters, sculptors, and
choreographers from Europe and Russia.

The Golden Cockerel tells the story of a
half-bird/half-maiden who sets out to doom
the tsar. Diaghilev wanted to blend exotic
Oriental and Russian folk culture with the
bold, graphic qualities of the new Russian
art. He chose Goncharova because of her
interest in Russian peasant folk tradition
with its ties to eastern Asia, and because
MM of her affiliation with the Russian avant-

\ \ garde movement.

1^ Based on the national peasant dress of

196

Russia, Goncharova's costumes comprised full, gathered skirts decorated
with flat, bold patterns, simple blouses with brightly colored sleeves, and
kerchiefs over cotton caps. The costume shows Goncharova's
sophisticated mixing of traditional and contemporary art forms and
prefigures an interest in costume and clothing design by other artists of the
Russian avant-garde.

Marc Chagall (Russia, 1887-1985,

active in France)

The Gamblers, 1919

Watercolor, tempera, and graphite

on paper

155/8 X 20 in. (39.7 x 50.8 cm)

Mr. and Mrs. William Preston Harrison Collection
39.9.6

THE GAMBLERS IS REUXTED to a
commission Marc Chagall received in
1919 to design scenery for a production of Nicolai Gogol's 1843 play of
the same name at the Hermitage Theater in St. Petersburg. The influence
of Russian folk art and mysticism that came to define the artist's work is
perceptible in the drawing, which is characterized by bold and expressive
colors and anatomical and spatial distortions. The spare palette of
The Gamblers, as well as its simplicity and clarity of drawing and com-
position, bespeak its connection to a theater set.

The monumental and isolated figure in the drawing's foreground is
Ikharev, the central character of Gogol's play. He throws his bilious green
head back in despair, sickened by a universal corruption in which he is
himself complicit. The absurdity and paradox that lay at the heart of
Gogol's aesthetic held particular appeal for Chagall. A larger reading of
The Gamblers suggests that it be viewed as a meditation on man's
alienation and the capriciousness of fate.

Chagall had returned to Russia in 1914 after several years in Paris,
where he observed and absorbed the lessons of Cubism among other
early-twentieth-century artistic movements. In this second Russian period

MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ART

197

(which lasted until 1923, when he returned to Paris), Chagall was
closely involved with the theater, first in Vitebsk, Belorussia, as the
Bolshevik-appointed Commissar of Fine Arts, and later in Moscow
and St. Petersburg.

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (Germany,

1 880-1 938)

Two Women, 1911-12/22

Oil on canvas

59x47 in. (149.9 x 119.4 cm)

Gift of B. Gerald Cantor
60.33

THE YEAR 1 91 1 was a milestone
for the avant-garde German Ex-
pressionist group Die Brucke
(The Bridge). That autumn, its three
key artists — Ernst Ludwig Kirchner,
Erich Meckel, and Karl Schmidt-
Rottluff — moved to Berlin from
Dresden, where they had worked
since 1905. The pulsating vitality of
this modern city was immediately reflected in their paintings and prints.

In Two Women, Kirchner depicted a pair of seamstresses on a Berlin
street. The figure on the right resembles his friend Dodo (Doris) Crosse,
who frequently modeled for the artist. Characteristic of Kirchner's work of
this period, this painting is executed in strong colors and jagged lines,
showing the awareness of Fauve as well as African and Oceanic art. He
presents his two female subjects forcefully and directly and makes no
attempt to beautify them; rather, he gives them lurid yellow complexions
set off by rich black garments. This depiction remains less aggressive,
however, than the many images Kirchner painted of hard-bitten and overtly
sexualized young women on city streets, which reveal even more
ambivalence toward modern urban life.

198

Kirchner resumed work on Two Women in the early 1920s in Davos,
Switzerland, where he moved in 1918 following a war-induced nervous
collapse. At this time, he heightened the contrast between various dark
and light passages in the painting — for example, between the women's
coats and the decorative cloth backdrop. On the reverse of Two Women is
Kirchner's Indian Dancer in Yellow Skirt (191 1), a seductive, barefoot dancer
in exotic dress that reveals an interest in "primitive" or non-Western
subjects that Kirchner shared with other Die Brucke artists.

Vasily Kandinsky (Russia, 1866-1944, active in Germany and France)

Untitled Improvisation III, 1914

Oil on cardboard

25% X 193/4 in. (65 x 50.2 cm)

Museum acquisition by exchange from David E. Bright Bequest
M.85.151

VASILY KANDINSKY ASSURED HIS REPUTATION as a central figure in the
development of modern art through his pioneering abstract work in Munich
prior to World War I. In 191 1 he and fellow artist Franz Marc formed the
German Expressionist association Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider).

The following year, Kandinsky published
Concerning the Spiritual in Art, a seminal text
in the history of art.

From 1910 to 1914, Kandinsky painted
a series of highly abstracted works called
Impressions, Improvisations, and Com-
positions, terms he appropriated from music.
These paintings are imbued with a turbulent,
apocalyptic quality and contain veiled
references to torrential floods, spear-wielding
knights on horseback, and other evocative
subjects. Kandinsky defined the Impro-
visations as paintings produced out of a
sudden and unconscious inner impulse. The

MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ART

199

GERMAN EXPRESSIONISM

Ludwig Meidner (Germany, 1 884-
1 966), Apocalyptic Landscape, 1913,
oil on canvas, 37 "1/2 x 31 % in. (95.3 x
80.3 cm), gift of Clifford Odets,
60.65.1b

Expressionism, an international
movement in the visual arts as well as
in literature, film, and theater, flourished
in Germany between 1905 and 1925.
The artists championed idealist values
and sought to break free from the
traditional restrictions of bourgeois
society. They were principally concerned
with expressing emotion and inner
psychological truth.

The founding members of the
pioneering German Expressionist group Die Brucke (The
Bridge) — Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Erich Meckel, Karl Schmidt-
Rottluff, and Fritz Bleyl — created images of anxiety and the social
alienation experienced in the growing metropolis prior to the
outbreak of World War I. Their paintings, sculptures, and prints
showed the influence of "primitive" art, with its simplified forms,
deliberately crude figuration, and powerful, often jarring

juxtapositions of color. The members of the more
stylistically diverse group Der Blaue Reiter (The
Blue Rider), which was founded in 191 1 by Vasily
Kandinsky, Franz Marc, and Gabriele Munter,
developed nonrepresentational images related to
spiritual concepts.

For many Expressionist artists. World War I
was a cataclysmic event that transformed their
art. While the war brought disillusionment, further

Erich Meckel (Germany, 1883-1970),
Standing Child, 1910, woodcut,
16i3/iex12lVi6in. (42.7 X
32.2 cm), The Robert Gore Rifkind
Center for German Expressionist
studies, M.82.288.370b

200

Hermann A. Scherer (Germany,
1893-1927), Sleeping Woman with
Boy, 1926, painted wood, 19''/2 x
135/^6x21 "I /gin. (49.5 X 35.4 X
54.6 cm), gift of Anna Bing Arnold,
M.84.30

Kathe Kollwitz (Germany, 1867-1945),
Self -Portrait, 1934, charcoal on paper,
17 X 13''/4 in. (43.2 x 33.7 cm), Los
Angeles County Fund, 69.1

alienation, and death to many, it
proved to be a core subject for the
Expressionists. The subsequent
revolution of 1918 provided an
opportunity for the artists to join
together in an idealistic effort to
radically reshape modern society.
The museum has a particularly
rich collection of German Expressionist art — paintings, sculptures,
prints, drawings, and illustrated books. The collection was built
through purchases and gifts beginning in 1946, when German-born
William Valentiner became codirector of the Los Angeles County
Museum of History, Science and Art (the precursor of IJVCMA). In
the 1980s, LAGMA established the Robert Gore Rifkind Center for
German Expressionist Studies. This comprehensive collection
includes approximately five thousand works on paper and a library
of more than four thousand volumes, many containing original
graphics, which were key to the accomplishments of the

Expressionists. These holdings include not only
superior impressions of woodcuts and lithographs
by Kirchner, Meckel, Emil Nolde, and Kandinsky,
but also rare periodicals and portfolios by Otto
Dix, Kathe Kollwitz, and Max Pechstein, as well as
numerous examples from lesser-known artists.

MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ART

201

quivering bruslistrokes, fluid lines, and saturated hues in Untitled
Improvisation III combine to create the sort of work that Kandinsky believed
would move the soul, like an inspiring piece of music. He fervently sought to
reach viewers on a spiritual level and thereby combat the materialist forces
that he felt imperiled modern society.

Untitled Improvisation III was formerly owned by the artist Gabriele
Munter and then by Hans Hofmann, the Abstract Expressionist painter who
brought the work with him when he emigrated from Germany to the United
States in 1931.

Kurt Schwitters (Germany, 1 887-1 948)
Construction for Noble Ladies, 1919
Cardboard, wood, metal, and paint
40 1/2 X 33 in. (102.9 x 83.8 cm)

Purchased with funds provided by Mr. and Mrs. Norton Simon, the Junior Arts Council, Mr and Mrs.
Frederick R. Weisman, Mr. and Mrs. Taft Schreiber, Hans de Schulthess, Mr and Mrs. Edwin Janss,
and Mr. and Mrs. Gifford Phillips
M.62.22

THE YEARS IMMEDIATELY AFTER WORLD WAR I were filled with great
ferment and experimentation. In this climate, poet, artist, and photographer
Kurt Schwitters developed his own unique aesthetic, which he called "Merz."
The concept was based on assemblage — the combining of ordinary objects
with artistic elements. For Schwitters, Merz was an attempt to achieve
freedom from all social, political, and cultural fetters.

Construction for Noble Ladies is one of Schwitters 's large-scale reliefs
known as Merzbilder (Merz pictures). It is revolutionary in its incorporation of
everyday detritus — a funnel, broken wheels, a flattened metal toy train, and a
ticket for shipping a bicycle by train — yet like the other Merzbilder, it remains
an elegantly composed picture. A traditional portrait of a "noble lady" in
profile, turned on her side and facing upward, is also included. These various
found materials, seemingly whimsical and casual, are transformed into formal
artistic elements by their arrangement according to Cubist principles.
Embedded in the composition are hints of a narrative.

202

MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ART

203

Georges Braque (France, 1 882-1 963)

Still Life with Violin, 1913

Oil on canvas

361/2x26 in. (92.7 x 66 cm)

Purchased with funds provided by the Mr and Mrs. George
Gard De Sylva Collection and the Copley Foundation
M.86,128

TOGETHER WITH PABLO PICASSO,
Georges Braque invented Cubism. Their
paintings from the years 1909 to 1914
seemed to grow one from the other,
indicating the close relationship between
the artists. Cubism was an art of everyday
life tied particularly to the cafes of Paris; the
works include vestiges of real-life referents
(wood-grain paper, newspapers, packages
of tobacco, and so forth).
Still Life with Violin is a transitional work between the two phases of
Cubism, the Analytic and the Synthetic. (The terms were coined by the
artists' zealous Parisian dealer, Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler.) Braque
incorporated the hallmarks of Analytic Cubism in his fragmentation of form
into multiple shifting planes and in his use of a restrained palette of browns
and grays. His depiction of wood grain signals the rise of Synthetic Cubism,
in which the fragmented planes are simplified, flattened out through a lack of
shading, and combined into often patterned forms that give the illusion of
recognizable objects. The wood-grained rectangle in Still Life with Violin
conjures up an image of a violin's gleaming wood surface; the S-scrolls
suggest sound holes; and the horizontal bars suggest a sheet of music.
Braque's use of the oval format, which he devised in 1909, is characteristic
of his Cubist works, as is his inclusion of snippets of floating typography
such as the one here reading "Duo pour" (duet for). For the Cubists, form

took primacy over subject matter.

204

Henri Matisse (France, 1869-1954)

Tea, 1919

Oil on canvas

55V4x83V4in. (140.3 x 21 1.5 cm)

Bequest of David L. Loew in memory of Inis father, Marcus Loew
M. 74. 52. 2

TEA IS THE LARGEST PAINTING executed by Henri Matisse in the years
just after World War I. It marks a notable departure from the artist's Fauve
work, in which he sought to transform his feelings into pure color. This
garden scene depicts Matisse's model Henriette, his daughter Marguerite,
and his dog Lili relaxing at the artist's residence in the Parisian suburb of
Issy-les-Moulineaux. Although Matisse's use of sunlight evokes the
Impressionists' attraction to painting directly from nature, he focused more
on communicating the cool lushness of the scene through adherence to
local color.

The masklike face of Marguerite, on the right, reflects the artist's long-
standing interest in African art and contrasts sharply with the more
conventionally rendered face of Henriette. In this sense. Tea is a logical

MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ART

205

extension of Matisse's formative work Heads ofJeannette (1910-13), also
in the museum's collection, in which he progressively abstracted the female
visage in a sequence of five bronze sculptures.

In 1929 British art critic Roger Fry remarked that he found this painting
to be "one of the most complete expressions of Matisse's highest powers."
Tea was the last major Matisse painting acquired by Michael and Sarah
Stein, brother and sister-in-law of Gertrude Stein and notable collectors in
their own right.

Laszio Moholy-Nagy (Hungary, 1895-1946, active in Germany

and the United States)

Untitled, c. 1925

Gelatin-silver print

93/8x7 in. (23.8 X 17.8 cm)

Ralph M. Parsons Fund
M.86.23

A WRITER, PAINTER, PHOTOGRAPHER, AND TEACHER, Laszio Moholy-
Nagy demonstrated a commanding talent in various arts, aesthetic theories,
and art education. While still in Europe in the 1920s (he emigrated to the
United States in 1937), Moholy sympathized with Dada and Constructivist
artists who sought to erect a new aesthetic on the rubble of outworn
bourgeois conventions. Moholy wanted to construct a new language of
perceptions that would enable artists to take the greatest intellectual,
spiritual, and aesthetic advantage of the world's emerging technologies.

In the 1920s and 1930s, images of the artist's hand proliferated as a
Constructivist sign, symbolizing among other things the role of the artist's
intellect and sense of touch in an ever-increasing mechanization of art.
Moholy's image was a response to a montage made in 1 924 by Russian
architect and painter El Lissitzky in which an engineer's compass lies
across the artist's extended fingers. Moholy's hand is a shadow, alluding
to the mysterious presence of the artist rather than delineating the hand
as one of many tools.

206

MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ART 207

Rene Magritte (Belgium, 1898-1967)

La Trahison des images (Ceci n'est pas une pipe), c. 1928-29

Oil on canvas

253/8x37 in. (64.5 x 94 cm)

Purchased with funds provided by the Mr. and Mrs. William Preston Harrison Collection
78.7

Ceci ri'^fixu wmfuf^.

niafHU

M TRAHISON DES iMAGES (Ceci n'est pas une pipe) (The Treachery of
images [This is not a pipe]) is one of Rene Magritte's Surrealist
masterpieces and an icon of modern art. Heavily influenced by Freudian
psychology, Surrealism represented a reaction against the "rationalism" that
some believed led Europe into the horrors of World War I. It attempted to
join the realm of dreams and fantasy to the everyday world.

Magritte's word-image paintings are treatises on the impossibility of
reconciling words, images, and objects. La Trahison des images challenges
the linguistic convention of identifying an image of something as the thing
itself. At first, Magritte's point appears simplistic, almost to the point of

208

provocation: A painting of a pipe is not the pipe itself. In fact, this work is
highly paradoxical. Its realistic style and caption format recall advertising, a
field in which Magritte had worked. Advertisements, however, elicit
recognition without hesitation or equivocation; this painting causes the
viewer to ponder its conflicting messages.

Magritte's use of text in his word-image paintings influenced a younger
generation of conceptually onented artists, including Jasper Johns, Roy
Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg, Edward Ruscha, and Andy Warhol.

Vasily Kandinsky (Russia, 1866-1944, active in Germany and France)

Semicircle, 1927

Watercolor and India ink on paper

19 X 12% in. (48.3x32.1 cm)

Estate of David E. Bright
M.67.25.7

DURING THE 1920s, VASILY KANDINSKY was one of the most influential
instructors at the Bauhaus, the experimental art school founded at Weimar,
then later reestablished at Dessau. Previously in his native Russia during

and after World War I, while under the influence
of Constructivists Kasimir Malevich and Vladimir
Tatlin, the artist began to move away from the
freewheeling and organic abstraction of the
prewar years toward a purer geometric language.
Kandinsky produced Semicircle during his
Bauhaus period, when his predilection for
geometric forms had fully asserted itself.

The circles, semicircles, thangles, rectangles,
checkerboards, and squares that populate
Semicircle are all arranged according to strict
color and compositional harmonies carefully
worked out by the artist. Floating in a sea of
liquid orange, his forms defy the traditional
relationship in painting between figure and
ground. For Kandinsky the circle had symbolic

MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ART

209

and cosmic meaning: "Tine circle is the synthesis of the greatest
oppositions," he wrote in 1929. "I love the circle today as I formerly loved
the horse." Significantly, Kandinsky's drawings, which were often
preliminary studies for paintings, achieved an independent status during
this period, perhaps to a greater degree than before or after.

Pablo Picasso (Spain,

1881-1973)

Female Nude Kneeling before

a Mirror, 1 934

Ink, watercolor, and colored

chalks on paper

97/8X 13% in.

(25.1 X 34.6 cm)

Mr. and Mrs. William Preston Harrison

Collection

39.9.12

THE SUBJECT OF THE ARTIST AND HIS MODEL preoccupied Pablo
Picasso at least from the late 1920s. Female Nude Kneeling before a Mirror
dates from a period of intense graphic activity, during which Picasso was
working on his famous series of one hundred etchings, the Vollard Suite,
forty-six of which were devoted to the theme of the sculptor in his studio.

In these images, Picasso mingled the Neoclassicism that characterized
much of his work of the 1920s with 1930s Surrealism. Elements of both
styles are evident in Female Nude Kneeling before a Mirror, a drawing
characterized by sensuous calligraphic lines and rich washes of color. The
voluptuous modeling of the female form, with its cross-hatching and
decorative patterning of tear-shaped pen strokes, gives the drawing a
particular vibrancy.

The kneeling nude — her head thrown back, her arms raised, her mouth
slightly open — seems autoerotically absorbed by her own reflection in the
mirror. At the same time, a bearded man (a frequent surrogate for Picasso)
peers at her voyeuhstically through an open window. The act of observing,
both passive (the mirror) and active (the model/muse, the voyeur, the artist.

210

the external viewer), thus becomes the drawing's central thenne. Its mystery
and sexual tension are further enhanced by the candle, which provides the
chamber's only light and casts a warm yellow glow across the model's
naked form.

Pablo Picasso (Spain, 1881-1973)
Weeping Woman with l-landl<ercliief, 1 937
Oil on canvas
21 X 17 1/2 in. (53.3 X 44.5 cm)

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Mitchell
55.90

PABLO PICASSO'S LONG CAREER comprised several successive and
radical shifts in formal concerns and, to a lesser degree, in subject matter.
During and after his stylistic periods — Blue, Rose, Cubism, Neoclassicism,
and Surrealism — Picasso explored themes in his own life and the world
around him.

In 1937 Picasso executed his mammoth antiwar canvas Guernica, a
protest to the carnage of the Spanish Civil War. After Picasso completed

Guernica he abandoned all but one of
its motifs: the weeping woman. He
drew her frequently, almost obsessively,
for the next several months.

Tears all over her face, the figure in
Weeping Woman witii l-landi<ercliief is
an emblem of despair. Yet crowned
with the traditional matronly mantilla,
she is also the embodiment of Spanish
womanhood. She represented
Picasso's public and private agony:
She was the victim of war, the grieving
mother, the terrified peasant, the
stunned survivor; but more specifically,
she was a portrait of his lover, the
artist-photographer Dora Maar, one in

MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ART

211

Claude Cahun [Lucy Schwob] (France,
1894-1954), I.O.U. (Self- Pride),
1929-30, gelatin-silver print,
6x4Vgin. (15.2 X 10.5 cm),
The Audrey and Sydney Irmas
Collection, AC1 992. 197.27

PHOTOGRAPHIC SELF-PORTRAITURE

For some, the human face is a text that has to be read and
deciphered. For others, there is no essential singularity to the
face; it is always in motion, acting out, performing itself.
Photographic portraits, whether traditional, modernist, or
postmodernist, whether text or performance, can be construed
as maps of the subject's inner workings. Self-portraits are even
more revealing — charts of the most personal sort usually done
in quiet complicity with the self. Even at their most distorted,
fragmented, or affected, self-portraits have for the most part
stayed remarkably true to their traditional values of unmasking
piL4^-i— ^^ Jfi the artist's ego.

Solidified in 1 992 by Audrey and Sydney
Irmas 's gift of nearly 1 50 works of self-
picturing and added to periodically since then,
the museum's collection of photographic
self-portraits ranges in variety from Alphonse-
Louis Poitevin as a solid bourgeoisie and
Francis Frith dressed in a Levantine costume
in the 1 850s to Yasumasa Morimura as Vivien
Leigh and Martin Kersels as a falling
trampolinist in the 1990s.

Each self-portrait in the Audrey and
Sydney Irmas Collection is a single image or
a discrete set of images, a sample or samples
of the self's reflection once removed. These
samples affirm the artists' individual selves,
not as shards or fragments of the psyche
but as whatever can be imagined. Each self-portrait thus
evidences the essential multiplicity of selves that were and are
the artists', and in turn, by implication, shows that none of us
is a singular self.

212

Walker Evans (United States,
1903-1975), Silhouette Self- Portrait,
1927, gelatin-silver print, 5\ x 3\ in.
(13.7 X 8.6 cm). The Audrey and
Sydney Irmas Collection,
AC1 992.1 97.49

Man Ray [Emmanuel Rudnitsky] (United States,
1890-1976, active in France), Self-Portrait, c. 1944,
gelatin-silver print, Q'^/q x 5'' 73 (17.5 x 13 cm),
The Audrey and Sydney Irmas Collection,
AC1 992. 197.86

Diane Arbus (United States, 1923-1971),
Self-Portrait in Mirror, 1 945, gelatin-silver print,
6 V2 X 4% in. (16.5 x 1 1 .7 cm). The Audrey and
Sydney Irmas Collection, AC1 992, 197.4

MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ART

213

a long line of Picasso's nnuses. Picasso's dramatic relationships with
women informed the metaphors he used to express the intensity of his
feelings over events in Spain.

Jackson Pollock (United States, 1912-1956)
Untitled, c. 1 945

Crayon, pastel, and gouache on paper
25% X 20 1/2 in. (65.1 x 52.1 cm)

Gift of Anna Bing Arnold and purchased with funds provided by Mr. William Inge, Dr. and
Mrs. Kurt Wagner, Graphic Arts Council Fund, and Museum Acquisition Fund
M.87.65

UNTITLED EXEMPLIFIES JACKSON POLLOCK'S pivotal period from 1945
to 1 946 when he shifted from the pictographic figurative references of his
earlier work (heavily influenced by Native American art as well as Jungian
psychology) to the gossamer fluidity of his mature drip paintings, the first of
which date from 1947.

The thick black calligraphic lines, circles, and almond shapes of this
drawing refer back to the figurative allusions and hieroglyphic notations of

the early 1940s, as does the masklike
form hovering at the center behind a
structuring grid of colored bars. At the
same time, the loosely flowing curves of
the black lines, interwoven with the
straight, crisscrossing bars, look
forward to the tangled skeins of paint
Pollock would employ in the famous
drip paintings. The effect of these two
diverging elements — the delineating
bars lying on the drawing's surface, and
the more organic shapes and lines
behind them — is to emphasize both
flatness and depth simultaneously

Pollock considered his drawings
to be fully realized works rather than

'•« iUA Ontrl^ •"•

214

studies for his paintings. Wliile Untitled is closely related to Pollock's oils of
the same period, it stands on its own as a testament to the artist's ferocious
creativity and independent spirit.

Willem de Kooning (United States, born Holland, 1904-1997)

Woman, c. 1952

Pastel, graphite, and charcoal on paper

143/8 X 121/8 in. (36.5 x 30.8 cm)

Purchased with funds provided by the estate of David E. Bright, Paul Rosenberg and Co.,

and Lita A Hazen

M.75.7

WILLEM DE KOONING, one Of the key figures

of Abstract Expressionism, was trained in
Rotterdam. He moved to New York City in
1927 and later to Long Island, where he
remained for the rest of his life. Never
succumbing fully to nonfigurative painting,
de Kooning claimed that "even abstract shapes
must have a likeness."

Figures of women dominate the artist's work
___ from as early as the 1 930s and can be said to
/ /I lylf I be the central, crucial theme of his career.

Particularly in the early 1 950s, de Kooning was
consumed with the subject, producing a series
of paintings and drawings of enormous power
and significance. The painting, Woman I (1950-52, Museum of Modern Art,
New York), was the great, seminal work of this period.

De Kooning's pastel Woman belongs to the large group of drawings
connected to the artist's Woman series (1950-55), and it may fall within a
particularly impressive subgroup made in Southampton, Long Island, in the
summer of 1 952 that relates directly to the painting Woman I. The pastel also
bears certain similarities (the yellow blouse and red skirt, for example) to
another painting from the series. Woman IV (1952-53, Nelson-Atkins
Museum of Art). Woman lacks the menacing presence of some of the works

MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ART

215

in the series, many of whicli have large, staring eyes and grotesque mouths
with bared teeth. Instead, de Kooning has abstracted the figure's head to a
boxlike form intersected by a swirling parabola that echoes the form's
voluminous breasts, thus emphasizing the archetypal nature of the image.

Mark Rothko (United States, born Latvia, 1903-1970)

White Center, 1 957

Oil on canvas

84x72 in. (213.4 x 182.9 cm)

The David E. Bright Bequest
M. 67. 25.21

ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONIST MARK ROTHKO is known for the hovering,
shimmering fields of color in his mature paintings. In his early works of the
1 930s, Rothko explored Social Realist themes, including works made under
the auspices of the Works Progress Administration. By the early 1940s, he

216

was exploring Surrealism as well as mythic and so-called primitive art. By
the end of that decade, however, Rothko had rejected the representational
subject matter of Surrealism and arrived at his mature style.

The color fields of White Center reflect Rothko 's fascination with the
emotional and visual power of the color red, which dominates his canvases
of the 1950s and 1960s. The red rectangles suggest ritual and elemental
associations (blood and fire, life and death), while an inner light seems to
emanate from the white center, suggesting an ethereal, numinous glow.
For Rothko, color was the key to a spiritual realm, evoking transcendental
truths that could not be expressed through recognizable imagery.

Eames Storage Unit

Designed by Charles Eames

(United States, 1907-1978) and

Ray Eames (United States,

1912-1988), 1949-50

Made by Herman Miller Furniture

Company, Zeeland, Michigan,

1951-55

Zinc-plated steel, birch-faced

plywood, plastic-coated plywood,

lacquered particle board, and

rubber

69x47x16 in.

(175.3X 119.4x40.6 cm)

Gift of Mr. Sid Avery and Mr James Corcoran
M. 86. 105

PARTNERS IN LIFE AS WELL AS IN WORK, Charles and Ray Eames were
polymath designers. From the 1940s to the 1970s, this husband-and-wife
team created furniture, toys, buildings, films, exhibitions, and books.
Working from their production studio in Venice, California, they expanded
the borders of design, exploring applications of ergonomics and inventing
new uses for materials. Important early advocates of new technologies and

MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ART

217

multimedia experiments, they believed good design in the service of
progressive modernization could bring about social change.

The Eameses were guided by a fundamental principle: "recognizing
the need." During the postwar era, they produced multifunctional, modern,
well-designed furniture for the widest possible audience. Their residence.
Case Study House #8, became a testing ground for their ideas about
innovative, standardized production. This storage unit shares the same
qualities as the fagade of the house: a geometric steel grid with colorful
panels. The first Eames cabinet pieces to be mass-produced, the storage
units were designed as modules to accommodate a wide variety of
residential and office functions. Compact, flexible, and inexpensive, the
storage units were the perfect expression of the Eameses' aim to make
low-cost, high-quality designs available to the average consumer Ironically
the furniture was not commercially successful, and unlike their chairs,
remained in production for only four years.

David Smith (United States, 1906-1965)

Cubi XXIII, 1964

Stainless steel

76 V4 X 172^/8 X 35% in. (193.7 x 439.1 x 89.9 cm)

Purchased with funds provided by the Modern and Contemporan/ Art Council
M.67.26

MORE THAN ANY OTHER ARTIST of his generation, David Smith brought
American sculpture to international attention. He combined the teachings
of European art histon/ with American know-how. Smith derived formal
structures from Cubism and Constructivism, added playfulness and
symbolism from Surrealism, and found physical freedom in Expressionism.
His blue-collar training as a steelworker brought a rugged and practical
perspective to his work. The iron sculptures of Pablo Picasso and Julio
Gonzalez gave Smith the confidence and inspiration to use iron and steel,
mediums he had previously associated with manual labor.

By the end of his career, Smith was exploring the medium itself as a
theme: how steel interacts with sunlight, how negative space defines form,

218

how lines in space may suggest human shapes. His final and most
celebrated series, Cubi, is the mature realization of Smith's elegant and
powerful geometry. Cubi XXIII is a study in light and mass; it does not so
much occupy space as illuminate it.

In 1965 the museum was planning one of its earliest exhibitions, a
show of Smith's sculpture, when the artist died in a car accident. The
exhibition became a memorial to the man and his work.

MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ART 21 9

Sigmar Poike

(Germany, born 1941)

The Fountain of Youth,

1984

Toned gelatin-silver print

50 X 110 in.

(127 x279.4 cm)

Purchased with funds provided by
the Art Museum Council, 1992
AC1 992. 150.1

THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH is one of Polke's major works of the mid-
1 980s. It takes its title from a Renaissance painting by Lucas Cranach
(1546, Gemaldegalerie, Staatliche Museen, Berlin), which is visible in the
center of the photowork. Polke's photograph of The Fountain of Youth also
captures the museum interior, showing two visitors examining the painting.
PoIke overlays an inverted scene of the exterior of the museum, visible only
in an array of circular forms and a vertical strip along the right edge of the
work. In this scene, revealed in fragments, a woman wearing a polka-dot
blouse, a white glove, short boots, and a long, dark flared skirt dramatically
kicks up her heels in front of the museum. By conflating these two views,
PoIke suggests that true youthful vitality may reside in the city's street life,
rather than on the museum's walls.

Anselm Kiefer (Germany, born 1 945)

777e eoo/c, 1985

Lead, steel, and tin

1 1 4 X 21 3 1/2 x 34 in. (289.6 x 542.3 x 86.4 cm)

Purchased with funds provided by the Modern and Contemporary Art Council and Louise and

Harold Held

M.85.376

ANSELM KIEFER IS ONE OF THE MOST ELOQUENT representatives of
the generation of German artists born immediately after World War II who
returned to the traditions of painting after the advent of Conceptual art in

220

the late 1960s and early 1970s. Kiefer's symbols often have several layers
of meaning. He also employs text to enrich and clarify his imagery, even
creating books out of photographs enhanced by sand, metals, and straw.

The Book, a rare sculpture in Kiefer's work, is an iconic summation of
many of his artistic concerns. It incorporates a monumental span of wings,
a recurring symbol that refers to creative inspiration as a means to a new
and better existence. But Kiefer's wings are also associated with Icarus of
Greek mythology, who fell to his death when he dared to fly too close to
the sun. Hence this complex object contains both the power of desire and
the risk of failure.

The book itself is another of Kiefer's favored symbols, connoting
knowledge that can result in both good and evil. The specter of history,
particularly the history of German nationalism, haunts Kiefer's work, and his
awareness of Jews as the people of the Book adds further meaning to the
sculpture. The lead surface of The Book is metaphorically significant; heavy
and antithetical to flight, this metal was also used by medieval alchemists
who attempted to turn base elements into gold. Every aspect of this work,
including its great size, conveys Kiefer's intense aspirations.

-fMf--hi.

MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ART

221

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA ART

Edward Kienholz (United States, 1927-
1994), Back Seat Dodge '38, 1964,
mixed media, 66 x 240 x 144 in.
(167.6 X 609.6 x 365.8 cm), purchased
with funds provided by the Art Museum
Council, M.81.248a-e

Edward Ruscha (United States, born
1937), Actual Size, 1962, oil on canvas,
72x67 in. (182.9 x 170.2 cm),
anonymous gift through the
Contemporary Art Council, M.63.14

With thousands of objects by
California artists amassed by six
curatorial departnnents, the museum's
collections reflect the historical
development of art in California from
the early years of the twentieth
century to the region's ascendance as
an international center for the creation
of contemporary art.

Especially well represented is art
made since 1965, when the museum
was established as an independent institution. In the 1960s, Los
Angeles-based artist Craig Kauffman was one of a group of
artists who used vacuum-formed plastics, vapor-coated glass,
and luminous pigments to impart an ethereal quality to his work.
Other artists used less sleek materials. Edward Kienholz's
evocative tableaux — Back Seat Dodge '38, for example — used
found objects, such as a junked automobile, to
create assemblages that were laden with
political, psychological, or spiritual meanings.
Edward Ruscha and Eleanor Antin explored
language- and narrative- based forms and were
among the pioneers of Pop and Conceptual
art. Recent California art at the museum ranges
from landscape photography evoking the
sublime by Sharon Lockhart to Chris Burden's
oversize police uniforms that reflect
contemporary social anxieties.

Fine art printmaking by Southern California
workshops is also represented at the museum. From the 1960s,
the Tamarind Lithography Workshop, Gemini G.E.L., and Cirrus

222

Chris Burden (United States, born 1931),
L.A.P.D. Uniforms. 1993, fabric, leather,
wood, metal, and plastic, 88 x 72 x 6 in.
(223.5 X 182.9 x 15.2 cm) each,
purchased with funds provided by the
Modern and Contemporary Art Council,
M. 2000. 151. 1-4

Bruce Nauman (United States, born
1941), Raw-War, 1971, 3-color
lithograph on Arches paper, printed in
3 runs from 3 matrices (stones and
aluminum plates), 22^2 x 28 V4 in.
(57.2 x 71 .8 cm). Cirrus Editions
Archive, purchased with funds
provided by the Director's Roundtable,
and gift of Cirrus Editions, M.86.2.678

TttT

Editions have dramatically fostered the
cosmopolitanism of the Los Angeles art scene.
Begun in the 1970s, Self-Help Graphics
supported the Chicane political and cultural
movement. In addition to publishing such major
California artists as Vija Celmins and Bruce
Nauman, these four workshops attracted
hundreds of international figures, including
Rufino Tamayo, Robert Rauschenberg, and Roy
Lichtenstein, who spent time in Los Angeles.

Southern California has also been a leader in setting fashion
trends. Beginning in the 1930s, a number of prominent
Hollywood movie costume designers — including Adrian, Irene,
Bonnie Cashin, Howard Greer, and Jean-Louis — extended
successful careers by opening their own couture houses, and
some of their signature work forms the museum's in-depth
collections. Southern California's beach culture influenced the
development of American swimwear, while the region's year-
round indoor/outdoor lifestyle gave rise to the casually stylish
American sportswear ensemble. Rudi Gernreich's visionary
designs, which influenced pop culture during the turbulent 1960s,
and the elegant haute couture of James Galanos are extensively
represented in the museum's collections.

Rudi Gernreich (Austria, 1922-1985, active in
the United States), Tunic and Pants, 1968, wool
knit with metal hooks and leather trim, cb. 30 in.
(76.2 cm), inseam 31 in. (78.7 cm), gift of Tomi
Kuwayama, ACI 999.205. 1.1 -2

MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ART

223

David Hockney (England, bom 1937, active in the United States)

Mulholland Drive: The Road to the Studio, 1980

Acrylic on canvas

86x243 in. (218.4 x 617.2 cm)

Purchased with funds provided by the F. Patrick Burns Bequest
M.83.35

AFTER A BRILLIANT CAREER at the Royal College of Art in London and
having already achieved international fame as a Pop artist, the young and
multitalented David Hockney left his native England for Los Angeles in the
early 1960s. "Within a week of arriving there in this strange big city, not
knowing a soul, I'd passed the driving test, bought a car, driven to Las
Vegas and won some money, got myself a studio, started painting, all
within a week. And I thought, it's just how I imagined it would be." Perhaps
it is his outsider's perspective that gives Hockney such fondness for his
adopted hometown; his long and varied career in painting, photography,
writing, stage design, and other endeavors has frequently paid homage to
the distinctive atmosphere that pervades Los Angeles. Hockney revels in
the sea, sun, sky, canyons, handsome young men, and overindulgent
luxuries that have come to characterize Southern California.

l\/iuihoiland Drive: The Road to the Studio, Hockney 's largest single
canvas, is based on his experience of daily drives along the curving hillcrest
road to and from his studio; it reads from left to right following the artist's

224

K journey across the landscape. The San Fernando Valley in the background
Ij is depicted in nnaplike lines. Certain details — grass and foliage — are
carefully rendered and stand out vividly while others are generalized, as if
blurred in Hockney's peripheral vision. Hockney uses bright, daring color,
explaining, "I like it and surround myself with it because I think, frankly, it
nnakes life a bit more joyful."

Sherrie Levlne (United States, born 1947)
Crystal Newborn, 1993; Black Newborn, 1994
Cast and sandblasted glass
5 X 8 X 8 1/2 in. (1 2.7 X 20.3 x 21 .6 cm) each

Gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinlnauser;
Purclnased with funds provided by
Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser
AC1997.249.31; AC1 995.87.1

SHERRIE LEVINE CREATED TWO EDITIONS (each of twelve) of Newborn,
one in translucent, frosted white glass and the other in black glass. Both
versions were cast from Constantin Brancusi's 1915 marble sculpture of
the same name in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

In the creation of these elegant objects, Levine utilized the notion of
appropriation that she helped to define in the early 1980s. By brazenly
toying with the idea of plagiarism, Levine calls attention to the conventional
recycling of aesthetic forms, thus questioning whether any art is truly

original. Her various copying tech-
niques— rephotography redrawing,
and, in this case, casting from
another medium — undercut the
concept of uniqueness that has been
essential to the historical and com-
mercial appraisal of the "authentic"
art object.

Ambivalence is central to
Levine's project. Although she seeks
to undermine the celebration of

MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ART

225

individual "genius" that Inas dominated nnany Inistories of modernism, she
also has great affection for the art she usurps. While her appropriations
criticize, they also express a longing for the heroism of high modernism at a
time when one of its most defining characteristics, newness, no longer
seems attainable. The irony is that by adopting Brancusi's sculpture as a
means of acknowledging this dilemma, Levine has reincarnated that work
into something novel. Under her aegis the title Newborn becomes a
purposeful double entendre.

Bill Viola (United States, born 1951)
Slowly Turning Narrative, 1 992
Video-sound installation with rotating screen
14 X 20 X 490 ft. (4.3 x 6.1 x 12.5 m)

Purchased with funds provided by the ivlodern and Contemporary Art Council
AC1 995. 146.1

BILL VI0L7\, A MEMBER OF THE FIRST GENERATION to grow up with
television, is an acclaimed pioneer of the medium of video art. Encoun-
tering his Slowly Turning Narrative, the viewer enters a darkened gallery
where overhead projectors are aimed from opposite sides of the room
onto a rotating plane perpendicular to the floor in the center. One surface
of the plane is a white screen that receives the video projections, while
the obverse surface is a mirror that casts the reflected images around the
walls of the room.

One projection features a colorful procession of vignettes of daily
human activity and life: newborn babies, children at play, people at work,
automobile accidents, lovers, celebrations, city life, nature — a catalogue
of everything that constitutes the world we inhabit and the events that
construct our individual histories. The other is a black-and-white projection
of a close-up of the artist reciting the phrases "the one who knows," "the
one who cries," "the one who reads," "the one who loves," "the one who
believes," and so on. His incantation evokes human consciousness and
the reflective nature of humankind. The reeling images at the center of the

226

room and coursing its perimeter tinus enfold the viewer in a colloquy
between the daily events of the physical world and the contemplative
self, which has the uniquely human capacity to reflect on and ascribe
meaning to life.

MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ART 227

4

PHOTOGRAPHY CREDITS

Most photographs are reproduced courtesy ot the creators and lenders of the material
depicted. For certain artwork and documentary photographs we have been unable to
trace copyright holders. We would appreciate notification of additional credits for
acknowledgment in future editions.

pp. 3, 210, and 211:© 2002 Picasso Administration/Artists Rights Society (ARS),
New York; pp. 8 and 224-25: © 2002 David Hockney; p. 141 : © Estate of Carlos
Merida/SOMAAR MexicoA/AGA, New York; pp. 143, 144, and 145 (bottom): © 2002
Banco de Mexico Diego Rivera and Frida Kahio Museums Trust. Reproduction
authorized by the Institute Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura; p. 145 (top): © Estate
of David Alfaro Siqueiros/SOMAAR MexicoA/AGA, New York; p. 147: © Estate of the
artist in support of Fundacion Olga y Rufino Tamayo, A.C.; p. 148: © 2002 Estate of
Joaquin Torres-Garcia/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGR Paris; p. 152:
© Enrique Chagoya; p. 154: Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Leiong, New York;
p. 177: © Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation; pp. 186-87: © 1981 Center for Creative
Photography, Arizona Board of Regents; pp. 188 and 228: © 2002 The Imogen
Cunningham Trust; p. 189: © 2002 Georgia O'Keeffe Foundation/Artists Rights
Society (ARS), New York; p. 190 (bottom): © Millard Sheets Estate; p. 191 (center):
© Lorser Feitelson and Helen Lundeberg Feitelson Arts Foundation; p. 191 (bottom):
Estate of Knud Merrild; p. 194: © 2002 Mikhail Larionov Estate/Artists Rights Society
(ARS), New York/ADAGR Paris; p. 196: © 2002 Natalia Goncharova Estate/Artists
Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGR Paris; p. 197: © 2002 Marc Chagall
Estate/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGR Paris; p. 198: © Ernst Ludwig
Kirchner, by Ingeborg and Dr. Wolfgang Henze-Ketterer, Wichtrach/Bern; pp. 199 and
209: © 2002 Wassily Kandinsky Estate/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/
ADAGP, Paris; p. 200 (top): © Ludwig Meidner-Archiv, Judisches Museum der Stadt
Frankfurt am Main; p. 200 (bottom): © 2002 Nachlass Erich Heckel/Artists Rights
Society (ARS), New York/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn; p. 201 (bottom): © 2002 Kathe
Kollwitz Estate/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn; p. 203:
© 2002 Kurt Schwitters Estate/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/VG Bild-Kunst,
Bonn; p. 204: © 2002 Georges Braque Estate/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New
York/ADAGR Paris; p. 205: © 2002 Succession H. Matisse/Artists Rights Society
(ARS), New York; p. 207: © 2002 Laszio Moholy-Nagy Estate/Artists Rights Society
(ARS), New YorkA/G Bild-Kunst, Bonn; p. 208: © 2002 C. Herscovici/Artists Rights
Society (ARS), New York; p. 213 (top): © Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan
Museum of Art; p. 213 (center): © 2002 Man Ray Estate/Artists Rights Society (ARS),
New York/ADAGR Paris; p. 213 (bottom): © The Estate of Diane Arbus, 1986; p. 214:
© 2002 Pollock-Krasner Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; p. 215:
© 2002 Willem de Kooning Revocable Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New
York; p. 216: © 1998 Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko/Artists Rights
Society (ARS), New York; p. 217: © Lucia Fames dba Fames Office; p. 219: © Estate
of David Smith/VAGA, New York; p. 220: © Sigmar Poike; p. 222 (top): © Edward
Kienholz and Nancy Reddin Kienholz; p. 222 (bottom): © Edward Ruscha; p. 223
(center): © 2002 Bruce Nauman/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; p. 227:
© Bill Viola

229

INDEX OF ARTISTS

Abu'l Hasan, attributed to, 61
Affleck, Thomas, attributed to, 160
Arbus, Diane, 213
Avelli da Rovigo, Francesco Xante,
90, 91

Bellows, George, 180
Boucher, Frangois, 103, 115
Braque, Georges, 204
Brigman, Anne, 184
Burden, Chris, 223
Burne-Jones, Edward, 119

Ingres, Jean-Auguste-Dominique, 118

Jagadeva, 39
Johnson, Sargent, 191

Kahio, Frida, 145
Kandinsky, Vasily, 199, 209
Katsushika Hokusai, 74
Kiefer, Anselm, 220
Kienholz, Edward, 222
Kirchner, Ernst Ludwig, 198
Kollwitz, Kathe, 201

Cahun, Claude, 212
Cassatt, Mary. 166
Cezanne, Paul, 123
Chagall, Marc, 197
Chagoya, Enrique, 152
Copley, John Singleton, 159
Cunningham, Imogen, 188

Deare, John, 1 17
Degas, Edgar, 120
de Kooning, Willem, 215
Delahaye, Jean, 93

Eames, Charles, 217
Eames, Ray, 217
Evans, Walker, 213

Feitelson, Lorser, 191

GechG, 77

Gerard, Baron Frangois, 103
Gernreich, Rudi, 223
Gogh, Vincent van, 126
Goncharova, Natalia, 196
Greene, Charles Sumner, 1 79
Greene, Henry Mather, 1 79
Guidi, Domenico, 106

Harrold, Robert, attributed to, 160
Heckel, Erich, 200
Hector Painter, 83
Hockney, David, 224
Homer, Winslow, 165, 170

Larionov, Mikhail, 195
La Tour, Georges de, 97
Levine, Sherrie, 225
Luti, Benedetto, 106

Macdonald-Whght, Stanton, 185

Magritte, Rene, 208

Man Ray, 213

Maratta, Carlo, 100

Master of Sees, the Protais, 88

Matisse, Henri, 205

Matta, 150

Meidner, Ludwig, 200

Meireles, Cildo, 153

Menzel, Adolph, 122

Merida, Carlos, 141

Merrild, Knud, 191

Meyer, Joseph Fortune, 178

Mochizuki Hanzan, 75

Moholy-Nagy, Laszio, 206

Moran, Thomas, 163

Moriguchi Kakb, 78

Moser, George Michael, 114

Nauman, Bruce, 223

Ogata Kenzan, 72
O'Keeffe, Georgia, 189

Peto, John Frederick, 176
Picasso, Pablo, 210, 211
Poike, Sigmar, 220
Pollock, Jackson, 214
Pyon Sangbyok, 67

230

Redmond, Granville, 190
Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn, 96
Rhead, Frederick Hurten, 178
Rivera, Diego, 142, 144
Rodin, Auguste, 124
Rosso Fiorentino, 88
Rothko, Mark, 216
Ruscha, Edward, 222
Ryan, Mazie Teresa, 1 78

Salgado, Sebastiao, 151

Sargent, John Singer, 169

Scherer, Hermann A., 201

Schwitters, Kurt, 202

Seymour, John, 161

Seymour, Thomas, 161

Sheets, Millard, 190

Shitao, 66

Siqueiros, David Alfaro, 1 45

Smith, David, 218

Sbko, 77

Soldani-Benzi, Massimiliano, 109

Stieglitz, Alfred, 182

Story, William Wetmore, 1 62

Sweerts, Michiel, 99

Tamayo, Rufino, 146
Tanner, Henry Ossawa, 171
Tiepolo, Giovanni Battista, 1 1 6
Tiffany, Louis Comfort, 173
Torres- Garcia, Joaquin, 149

Ugo da Carpi, 94

Villiers II, Nicolas de, 93
Viola, Bill, 226
Vouet, Simon, 102

Watteau, Jean-Antoine, 108
Webb, Philip, 119
Weston, Edward, 186
Wright, Frank Lloyd, 177

Xiang Shengmo, 64

231

COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES BOARD OF SUPERVISORS, 2003

Gloria Molina
First District

Yvonne Brathwaite Burke
Second District

Zev Yaroslavsky
Third District

Don Knabe
Fourth District

Michael D. Antonovich
Fifth District

David E. Janssen

Chief Administrative Officer

LOS ANGELES COUNTY MUSEUM OF ART

Andrea L. Rich, President and Director

BOARD OF TRUSTEES, FISCAL YEAR 2002-2003

Walter L. Weisman, Chairman
Enrique Hernandez, Jr., Vice Chairman
Mrs. Stewart Resnick, Vice Chairman
Christopher V. Walker, Vice Chairman
William A. Mingst, Chairman of the

Executive Committee
Michael G. Smooke, Secretary

William hi. Ahmanson

Wallis Annenberg

Frank E. Baxter

Daniel N. Belin

Suzanne Deal Booth

Donald L. Bren

Eli Broad

Ronald W. Burkle

Iris Cantor

Mrs. Edward W. Carter

Robert A. Day

Janet Dreisen

Jeremy G. Fair

Camilla Chandler Frost

Julian Ganz, Jr.

John R Hotchkis

Judith G. Jones

Mrs. Dwight M. Kendall

Mrs. Harry Lenart

Abby J. Levy

Robert Looker

Ms. Monica C. Lozano

Robert F. Maguire III

Liam E. McGee

Mrs. Wendy Stark Morrlssey

Peter Norton

John P. Puerner

Nancy Daly Riordan

Sandra W. Terner

Senior Trustees

Mrs. Lionel Bell

Dr. George N. Boone

Mrs. William M. Carpenter

Stanley Grinstein

Robert H. Halff

Life Trustees

Mrs. Howard Ahmanson

Robert H. Ahmanson

Robert O. Anderson

Mrs. Anna Bing Arnold

Joseph B. Koepfli

Eric Lidow

Mrs. Lillian Apodaca Weiner

Past Presidents
Edward W. Carter, 1961-66
Sidney F Brody, 1 966-70
Dr. Franklin D. Murphy, 1970-74
Richard E. ShenA/ood, 1974-78
Mrs. F Daniel Frost, 1 978-82
Julian Ganz, Jr., 1982-86
Daniel N. Belin, 1986-90
Robert F Maguire III, 1990-94
William A. Mingst, 1994-98

$16.95 (CAN.$26.00)

world of art

ancient and
classical art

western art

modern and
contemporary art

world art

architecture

design

graphics

photography

decorative arts

performing arts

reference

LOS ANGELES COUNTY
MUSEUM OF ART

Los Angeles is a world capital in today's global age, and the Los
Angeles County Museum of Art (IJ\CMA), the largest, most
comprehensive art museum in the western United States, plays a
central role in the city's dynamic cultural life. I^CMA is the youngest
of the nation's leading encyclopedic art institutions, yet its collections
have rapidly expanded to include more than 100,000 works of art,
from prehistory to contemporary civilization, from every part of the
world, and from all media, including painting and sculpture, prints and
drawings, decorative arts, costume and textiles, and photography.
This useful guide features texts written by the museum's curators and
full-color reproductions of works from each of the museum's eleven
departments integrated into five sections — Asian Art, European Art,
Latin American Art, American Art, and Modern and Contemporary
Art — that reveal the collections' remarkable depth and range. From
the magnificently intricate /^rc/aib// Carpet to David Hockney's vast
and circuitous Mulholland Drive: The Road to the Studio, L7\CMA's
collections reflect the tremendous diversity of the city that it serves.

On the cover:

Georges de La Tour (France, 1593-1652)

The Magdalen with the Smoking Flame (detail), c. 1638-40

Oil on canvas

46V,6x36'/gin, (117x91. 8 cm)

Gift of The Ahmanson Foundation

M.77J3

Printed in Singapore

'^^^ Thames & Hudson world of art

in;

CD!

CD